



A' ^^'% 






MISCELLANIES 



BY 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 



UBRARY of CONGRESS 


TwoCoDi€? Received 


JUN 20 1906 


eopyright Entry 


CLASS XXc. No. 


cor^Y B. ] 



.A I 



COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

COPYRIGHT, 1883, 1904, AND 1906, BY EDWARD W. EMERSON 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



PREFACE 

THE year after Mr. Emerson's death, Mr. 
Cabot, in editing his works, gathered into 
a volume the occasional writings which had 
never been included in previous editions, al- 
though six of them had been printed, either as 
pamphlets or in periodicals, long before, by the 
author. These were the Sermon on The Lord's 
Supper, the Historical Address at Concord in 
1835, that at the dedication of the Soldiers' 
Monument there in 1867, and that on Eman- 
cipation in the British West Indies, the Essay 
on War, and the Editors' Address in the 
Massachusetts ^arterly Review, " American 
Civilization " had been a portion of the article 
of that name in the Atlantic in 1862. "The 
Fortune of the Republic " also had been printed 
as a pamphlet in 1874. Mr. Cabot said in his 
prefatory note, "In none was any change from 
the original form made by me, except in the 
' Fortune of the Republic,' which was made up 
of several lectures, for the occasion upon which 
it was read." This was after Mr. Emerson was 



vi PREFACE 

no longer able to arrange his work and his 
friends had come to his aid. 

The speeches at the John Brown, the Wal- 
ter Scott, and the Free Religious Association 
meetings had been printed, probably with Mr. 
Emerson's consent. The other pieces included 
by Mr. Cabot, namely, the speeches on Theo- 
dore Parker, the Emancipation Proclamation, 
Abraham Lincoln, at the Harvard Commemora- 
tion, " Woman," the addresses to Kossuth, 
and at the Burns Festival, had not been pub- 
lished. 

All that were in Mr. Cabot's collection will be 
found here, although the order has been slightly 
changed. To these 1 have added Mr. Emerson's 
letter to President Van Buren in 1838, his 
speech on the Fugitive Slave Law in Concord 
soon after its enactment, that on Shakspeare 
to the Saturday Club, and his remarks at the 
Humboldt Centennial, and at the dinner to the 
Chinese Embassy ; also the addresses at the con- 
secration of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and at the 
opening of the Concord Free Public Library. 
The oration before the New England Society 
of New York in 1870, printed by them in their 
recent volume, is not included, as most of the 



PREFACE vii 

matter may be found in the Historical Discourse 

at Concord and in the essay " Boston,*' in 

Natural History of Intellect, 

I have given to the chapters mottoes, the 

most of them drawn from Mr. Emerson's 

writings. 

EDWARD W. EMERSON. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. THE LORD'S SUPPER i 

II. HISTORICAL DISCOURSE AT 

CONCORD 27 

III. LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN 

BUREN 87 

IV. EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH 

WEST INDIES 97 

V. WAR 149 
VI. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW — 

ADDRESS AT CONCORD 177 
VII. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW — 

LECTURE AT NEW YORK 215 
VIII. THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 245 

IX. SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 253 
X. JOHN BROWN — SPEECH AT 

BOSTON 265 
XL JOHN BROWN — SPEECH AT 

SALEM 275 

XII. THEODORE PARKER 283 

XIII. AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 295 



X CONTENTS 

XIV. THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMA- 
TION 313 
XV. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 327 
XVI. HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

SPEECH 339 

XVII. DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS' 

MONUMENT IN CONCORD 347 

XVIII. EDITORS' ADDRESS 381 

XIX. ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 395 

XX. WOMAN 403 

XXI. CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY 

HOLLOW CEMETERY 427 

XXII. ROBERT BURNS 437 

XXIII. SHAKSPEARE 445 

XXIV. HUMBOLDT 455 
XXV. WALTER SCOTT 461 

XXVI. SPEECH AT BANQUET IN HONOR 

OF CHINESE EMBASSY 469 

XXVII. REMARKS AT ORGANIZATION OF 

FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 475 
XXVIII. SPEECH AT SECOND ANNUAL 
MEETING OF FREE RELIGIOUS 
ASSOCIATION 483 



CONTENTS xi 
XXIX. ADDRESS AT OPENING OF CON- 
CORD FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY 493 
XXX. THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 509 
NOTES 545 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 

SERMON DELIVERED BEFORE THE SECOND CHURCH IN 
BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 9, 1832 

I LIKE a church; I like a cowl, 
I love a prophet of the soul; 
And on my heart monastic aisles 
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles: 
Yet not for all his faith can see 
Would I that cowled churchman be. 
Why should the vest on him allure. 
Which I could not on me endure ? 



The word unto the prophet spoken 
Was writ on tables yet unbroken; 
The word by seers or sibyls told. 
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold. 
Still floats upon the morning wind. 
Still whispers to the willing mind. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 

The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, 
and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. — Romans xiv. 17. 

IN the history of the Church no subject has 
been more fruitful of controversy than the 
Lord*s Supper. There never has been any unan- 
imity in the understanding of its nature, nor 
any uniformity in the mode of celebrating it. 
Without considering the frivolous questions 
which have been lately debated as to the posture 
in which men should partake of it; whether mixed 
or unmixed wine should be served ; whether leav- 
ened or unleavened bread should be broken ; — 
the questions have been settled differently in 
every church, who should be admitted to the 
feast, and how often it should be prepared. In 
the Catholic Church, infants were at one time 
permitted and then forbidden to partake ; and 
since the ninth century the laity receive the bread 
only, the cup being reserved to the priesthood. 
So,as to the time of the solemnity. In the Fourth 
Lateran Council, it was decreed that any believer 
should communicate at least once in a year, — 
at Easter. Afterwards it was determined that 



4 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

this Sacrament should be received three times in 
the year, — at Easter, Whitsuntide and Christ- 
mas. But more important controversies have 
arisen respecting its nature. The famous ques- 
tion of the Real Presence was the main contro- 
versy between the Church of England and the 
Church of Rome. The doctrine of the Consub- 
stantiation taught by Luther was denied by Cal- 
vin. In the Church of England, Archbishops 
Laud and Wake maintained that the elements 
were an Eucharist, or sacrifice of Thanksgiving 
to God ; Cudworth and Warburton, that this was 
not a sacrifice, but a sacrificial feast ; and Bishop 
Hoadley, that it was neither a sacrifice nor a feast 
after sacrifice, but a simple commemoration. And 
finally, it is now near two hundred years since 
the Society of Quakers denied the authority of 
the rite altogether, and gave good reasons for 
disusing it. 

I allude to these facts only to show that, so 
far from the Supper being a tradition in which 
men are fully agreed, there has always been the 
widest room for diflFerence of opinion upon this 
particular. Having recently given particular 
attention to this subject, I was led to the conclu- 
sion that Jesus did not intend to establish an 
institution for perpetual observance when he ate 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 5 

the Passover with his disciples ; and further, to 
the opinion that it is not expedient to celebrate 
it as we do. I shall now endeavor to state dis- 
tinctly my reasons for these two opinions. 

I. The authority of the rite. 

An account of the Last Supper of Christ with 
his disciples is given by the four Evangelists, 
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

In St. Matthew's Gospel (Matt. xxvi. 26-30) 
are recorded the words of Jesus in giving bread 
and wine on that occasion to his disciples, but 
no expression occurs intimating that this feast 
was hereafter to be commemorated. In St. Mark 
(Mark xiv. 22-25) the same words are recorded, 
and still with no intimation that the occasion 
was to be remembered. St. Luke (Luke xxii. 1 9), 
after relating the breaking of the bread, has these 
words: "This do in remembrance of me." In 
St. John, although other occurrences of the same 
evening are related, this whole transaction is 
passed over without notice. 

Now observe the facts. Two of the Evangel- 
ists, namely, Matthew and John, were of the 
twelve disciples, and were present on that occa- 
sion. Neither of them drops the slightest inti- 
mation of any intention on the part of Jesus to 
set up anything permanent. John especially, the 



6 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

beloved disciple, who has recorded with minute- 
ness the conversation and the transactions of 
that memorable evening, has quite omitted such 
a notice. Neither does it appear to have come 
to the knowledge of Mark, who, though not an 
eye-witness, relates the other facts. This mate- 
rial fact, that the occasion was to be remembered, 
is found in Luke alone, who was not present. 
There is no reason, however, that we know, for 
rejecting the account of Luke. I doubt not, the 
expression was used by Jesus. I shall presently 
consider its meaning. I have only brought these 
accounts together, that you may judge whether 
it is likely that a solemn institution, to be con- 
tinued to the end of time by all mankind, as they 
should come, nation after nation, within the 
influence of the Christian religion, would have 
been established in this slight manner — in a 
manner so slight, that the intention of com- 
memorating it should not appear, from their nar- 
rative, to have caught the ear or dwelt in the 
mind of the only two among the twelve who 
wrote down what happened. 

Still we must suppose that the expression, 
"This do in remembrance of me," had come 
to the ear of Luke from some disciple who was 
present. What did it really signify ? It is a pro- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 7 

phetic and an affectionate expression. Jesus is 
a Jew, sitting with his countrymen, celebrating 
their national feast. He thinks of his own im- 
pending death, and wishes the minds of his dis- 
ciples to be prepared for it. " When hereafter,** 
he says to them, " you shall keep the Passover, 
it will have an altered aspect to your eyes. It 
is now a historical covenant of God with the 
Jewish nation. Hereafter it will remind you of 
a new covenant sealed with my blood. In years 
to come, as long as your people shall come up 
to Jerusalem to keep this feast, the connection 
which has subsisted between us will give a new 
meaning in your eyes to the national festival, 
as the anniversary of my death.'* I see natural 
feeling and beauty in the use of such language 
from Jesus, a friend to his friends ; I can readily 
imagine that he was willing and desirous, when 
his disciples met, his memory should hallow 
their intercourse ; but I cannot bring myself 
to believe that in the use of such an expression 
he looked beyond the living generation, beyond 
the abolition of the festival he was celebrating, 
and the scattering of the nation, and meant to 
impose a memorial feast upon the whole world. 
Without presuming to fix precisely the pur- 
pose in the mind of Jesus, you will see that 



8 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

many opinions may be entertained of his inten- 
tion, all consistent with the opinion that he did 
not design a perpetual ordinance. He may have 
foreseen that his disciples would meet to re- 
member him, and that with good effect. It may 
have crossed his mind that this would be easily 
continued a hundred or a thousand years, — as 
men more easily transmit a form than a virtue, 
— and yet have been altogether out of his pur- 
pose to fasten it upon men in all times and all 
countries. 

But though the words, " Do this in remem- 
brance of me,'* do not occur in Matthew, Mark 
or John, and although it should be granted us 
that, taken alone, they do not necessarily im- 
port so much as is usually thought, yet many 
persons are apt to imagine that the very striking 
and personal manner in which the eating and 
drinking is described, indicates a striking and 
formal purpose to found a festival. And I ad- 
mit that this impression might probably be left 
upon the mind of one who read only the pass- 
ages under consideration in the New Testament. 
But this impression is removed by reading any 
narrative of the mode in which the ancient or 
the modern Jews have kept the Passover. It is 
then perceived that the leading circumstances 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 9 

in the Gospels are only a faithful account of 
that ceremony. Jesus did not celebrate the 
Passover, and afterwards the Supper, but the 
Supper was the Passover. He did with his dis- 
ciples exactly what every master of a family in 
Jerusalem was doing at the same hour with his 
household. It appears that the Jews ate the 
lamb and the unleavened bread and drank wine 
after a prescribed manner. It was the custom 
for the master of the feast to break the bread 
and to bless it, using this formula, which the 
Talmudists have preserved to us, " Blessed be 
Thou, O Lord, our God, who givest us the 
fruit of the vine," — and then to give the cup 
to all. Among the modern Jews, who in their 
dispersion retain the Passover, a hymn is also 
sung after this ceremony, specifying the twelve 
great works done by God for the deliverance of 
their fathers out of Egypt. 

But still it may be asked. Why did Jesus 
make expressions so extraordinary and emphatic 
as these — " This is my body which is broken 
for you. Take ; eat. This is my blood which 
is shed for you. Drink it " ? — I reply they are 
not extraordinary expressions from him. They 
were familiar in his mouth. He always taught 
by parables and symbols. It was the national 



lo THE LORD'S SUPPER 

way of teaching, and was largely used by him. 
Remember the readiness which he always showed 
to spiritualize every occurrence. He stopped 
and wrote on the sand. He admonished his 
disciples respecting the leaven of the Pharisees. 
He instructed the woman of Samaria respect- 
ing living water. He permitted himself to be 
anointed, declaring that it was for his interment. 
He washed the feet of his disciples. These are 
admitted to be symbolical actions and expressions. 
Here, in like manner, he calls the bread his 
body, and bids the disciples eat. He had used 
the same expression repeatedly before. The 
reason why St. John does not repeat his words 
on this occasion seems to be that he had re- 
ported a similar discourse of Jesus to the people 
of Capernaum more at length already (John vi. 
27-60). He there tells the Jews, " Except ye 
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his 
blood, ye have no life in you." And when the 
Jews on that occasion complained that they did 
not comprehend what he meant, he added for 
their better understanding, and as if for our 
understanding, that we might not think his body 
was to be actually eaten, that he only meant we 
should live by his commandment. He closed 
his discourse with these explanatory expressions : 



THE LORD'S SUPPER ii 

" The flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I 
speak to you, they are spirit and they are life." 
Whilst I am upon this topic, I cannot help 
remarking that it is not a little singular that we 
should have preserved this rite and insisted upon 
perpetuating one symbolical act of Christ whilst 
we have totally neglected all others, — particu- 
larly one other which had at least an equal claim 
to our observance. Jesus washed the feet of his 
disciples and told them that, as he had washed 
their feet, they ought to wash one another's feet ; 
for he had given them an example, that they 
should do as he had done to them. I ask any 
person who believes the Supper to have been 
designed by Jesus to be commemorated for- 
ever, to go and read the account of it in the 
other Gospels, and then compare with it the 
account of this transaction in St. John, and tell 
me if this be not much more explicitly author- 
ized than the Supper. It only differs in this, 
that we have found the Supper used in New 
England and the washing of the feet not. But 
if we had found it an established rite in our 
churches, on grounds of mere authority, it would 
have been impossible to have argued against it. 
That rite is used by the Church of Rome, and 
by the Sandemanians. It has been very properly 



12 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

dropped by other Christians. Why ? For two 
reasons : (i) because it was a local custom, and 
unsuitable in western countries ; and (2) because 
it was typical, and all understood that humility 
is the thing signified. But the Passover was 
local too, and does not concern us, and its bread 
and wine were typical, and do not help us to 
understand the redemption which they signified. 
These views of the original account of the Lord's 
Supper lead me to esteem it an occasion full of 
solemn and prophetic interest, but never in- 
tended by Jesus to be the foundation of a per- 
petual institution. 

It appears, however, in Christian history that 
the disciples had very early taken advantage of 
these impressive words of Christ to hold religious 
meetings, where they broke bread and drank 
wine as symbols. I look upon this fact as very 
natural in the circumstances of the Church. The 
disciples lived together ; they threw all their 
property into a common stock; they were bound 
together by the memory of Christ, and nothing 
could be more natural than that this eventful 
evening should be affectionately remembered by 
them ; that they, Jews like Jesus, should adopt 
his expressions and his types, and furthermore, 
that what was done with peculiar propriety by 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 13 

them, his personal friends, with less propriety 
should come to be extended to their companions 
also. In this way religious feasts grew up among 
the early Christians. They were readily adopted 
by the Jewish converts, who were familiar with 
religious feasts, and also by the Pagan converts, 
whose idolatrous worship had been made up of 
sacred festivals, and who very readily abused 
these to gross riot, as appears from the censures 
of St. Paul. Many persons consider this fact, 
the observance of such a memorial feast by the 
early disciples, decisive of the question whether 
it ought to be observed by us. There was good 
reason for his personal friends to remember their 
friend and repeat his words. It was only too 
probable that among the half-converted Pagans 
and Jews, any rite, any form, would find favor, 
whilst yet unable to comprehend the spiritual 
character of Christianity. 

The circumstance, however, that St. Paul 
adopts these views, has seemed to many persons 
conclusive in favor of the institution. I am of 
opinion that it is wholly upon the Epistle to the 
Corinthians, and not upon the Gospels, that the 
ordinance stands. Upon this matter of St. Paul's 
view of the Supper, a few important considera- 
tions must be stated. 



14 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

The end which he has in view, in the eleventh 
chapter of the first Epistle, is not to enjoin upon 
his friends to observe the Supper, but to censure 
their abuse of it. We quote the passage now- 
adays as if it enjoined attendance upon the Sup- 
per ; but he wrote it merely to chide them for 
drunkenness. To make their enormity plainer, 
he goes back to the origin of this religious feast 
to show what sort of feast that was, out of which 
this riot of theirs came, and so relates the trans- 
actions of the Last Supper. " I have received 
of the Lord," he says, " that which I delivered 
to you." By this expression it is often thought 
that a miraculous communication is implied; 
but certainly without good reason, if it is remem- 
bered that St. Paul was living in the lifetime of 
all the apostles who could give him an account 
of the transaction ; and it is contrary to all rea- 
son to suppose that God should work a miracle 
to convey information that could so easily be got 
by natural means. So that the import of the 
expression is that he had received the story of 
an eye-witness such as we also possess. 

But there is a material circumstance which 
diminishes our confidence in the correctness of 
the Apostle's view ; and that is, the observation 
that his mind had not escaped the prevalent 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 15 

error of the primitive Church, the belief, namely, 
that the second coming of Christ would shortly 
occur, until which time, he tells them, this feast 
was to be kept. Elsewhere he tells them that at 
that time the world would be burnt up with fire, 
and a new government established, in which the 
Saints would sit on thrones ; so slow were the 
disciples, during the life and after the ascension 
of Christ, to receive the idea which we receive, 
that his second coming was a spiritual kingdom, 
the dominion of his religion in the hearts of 
men, to be extended gradually over the whole 
world. In this manner we may see clearly enough 
how this ancient ordinance got its footing among 
the early Christians, and this single expectation 
of a speedy reappearance of a temporal Messiah, 
which kept its influence even over so spiritual 
a man as St. Paul, would naturally tend to pre- 
serve the use of the rite when once established. 
We arrive, then, at this conclusion : first, that 
it does not appear, from a careful examination of 
the account of the Last Supper in the Evangel- 
ists, that it was designed by Jesus to be per- 
petual ; secondly, that it does not appear that 
the opinion of St. Paul, all things considered, 
ought to alter our opinion derived from the 
Evangelists. 



i6 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

One general remark before quitting this branch 
of this subject. We ought to be cautious in tak- 
ing even the best ascertained opinions and prac- 
tices of the primitive Church for our own. If it 
could be satisfactorily shown that they esteemed 
it authorized and to be transmitted forever, that 
does not settle the question for us. We know 
how inveterately they were attached to their 
Jewish prejudices, and how often even the in- 
fluence of Christ failed to enlarge their views. 
On every other subject succeeding times have 
learned to form a judgment more in accordance 
with the spirit of Christianity than was the prac- 
tice of the early ages. 

II. But it is said: "Admit that the rite was 
not designed to be perpetual. What harm doth 
it ? Here it stands, generally accepted, under 
some form, by the Christian world, the un- 
doubted occasion of much good ; is it not bet- 
ter it should remain ? " This is the question of 
expediency. 

I proceed to state a few objections that in my 
judgment lie against its use in its present form. 

I. If the view which I have taken of the his- 
tory of the institution be correct, then the claim 
of authority should be dropped in administer- 
ing it. You say, every time you celebrate the 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 17 

rite, that Jesus enjoined it ; and the whole lan- 
guage you use conveys that impression. But 
if you read the New Testament as I do, you do 
not believe he did. 

2. It has seemed to me that the use of this 
ordinance tends to produce confusion in our 
views of the relation of the soul to God. It is 
the old objection to the doctrine of the Trinity, 
— that the true worship was transferred from 
God to Christ, or that such confusion was intro- 
duced into the soul that an undivided worship 
was given nowhere. Is not that the effect of the 
Lord's Supper ? I appeal now to the convictions 
of communicants, and ask such persons whether 
they have not been occasionally conscious of 
a painful confusion of thought between the 
worship due to God and the commemoration 
due to Christ. For the service does not stand 
upon the basis of a voluntary act, but is imposed 
by authority. It is an expression of gratitude to 
Christ, enjoined by Christ. There is an endeavor 
to keep Jesus in mind, whilst yet the prayers 
are addressed to God. I fear it is the effect of 
this ordinance to clothe Jesus with' an authority 
which he never claimed and which distracts the 
mind of the worshipper. I know our opinions 
differ much respecting the nature and offices of 

XI 



1 8 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

Christ, and the degree of veneration to which 
he is entitled. I am so much a Unitarian as 
this : that I believe the human mind can admit 
but one God, and that every effort to pay re- 
ligious homage to more than one being goes to 
take away all right ideas. I appeal, brethren, 
to your individual experience. In the moment 
when you make the least petition to God, though 
it be but a silent wish that he may approve you, 
or add one moment to your life, — do you not, 
in the very act, necessarily exclude all other 
beings from your thought ? In that act, the 
soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no 
more present to your mind than your brother 
or your child.' 

But is not Jesus called in Scripture the Medi- 
ator? He is the mediator in that only sense in 
which possibly any being can mediate between 
God and man, — that is, an instructor of man. 
He teaches us how to become like God. And 
a true disciple of Jesus will receive the light he 
gives most thankfully ; but the thanks he offers, 
and which an exalted being will accept, are not 
compliments, commemorations, but the use of 
that instruction. 

3. Passing other objections, I come to this, 
that the use of the elements, however suitable 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 19 

to the people and the modes of thought in the 
East, where it originated, is foreign and unsuited 
to affect us. Whatever long usage and strong 
association may have done in some individuals 
to deaden this repulsion, I apprehend that their 
use is rather tolerated than loved by any of us. 
We are not accustomed to express our thoughts 
or emotions by symbolical actions. Most men 
find the bread and wine no aid to devotion, and to 
some it is a painful impediment. To eat bread 
is one thing ; to love the precepts of Christ 
and resolve to obey them is quite another,' 

The statement of this objection leads me to 
say that I think this difficulty, wherever it is 
felt, to be entitled to the greatest weight. It 
is alone a sufficient objection to the ordinance. 
It is my own objection. This mode of com- 
memorating Christ is not suitable to me. That 
is reason enough why I should abandon it. If 
I believed it was enjoined by Jesus on his dis- 
ciples, and that he even contemplated making 
permanent this mode of commemoration, every 
w^ay agreeable to an Eastern mind, and yet on 
trial it was disagreeable to my own feelings, I 
should not adopt it. I should choose other 
ways which, as more effectual upon me, he 
would approve more. For I choose that my 



20 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

remembrances of him should be pleasing, affect- 
ing, religious. I will love him as a glorified 
friend, after the free way of friendship, and not 
pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do those 
whom they fear. A passage read from his dis- 
courses, a moving provocation to works like 
his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken 
a pure thought, a flow of love, an original de- 
sign of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemo- 
ration. 

4. The importance ascribed to this particular 
ordinance is not consistent with the spirit of 
Christianity. The general object and effect of 
the ordinance is unexceptionable. It has been, 
and is, I doubt not, the occasion of indefinite 
good ; but an importance is given by Christians 
to it which never can belong to any form. My 
friends, the Apostle well assures us that " the 
kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but 
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost." I am not so foolish as to declaim against 
forms. Forms are as essential as bodies ; but to 
exalt particular forms, to adhere to one form a 
moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and 
it is alien to the spirit of Christ. If I under- 
stand the distinction of Christianity, the reason 
why it is to be preferred over all other systems 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 21 

and is divine is this, that it is a moral system ; 
that it presents men with truths which are their 
own reason, and enjoins practices that are their 
own justification ; that if miracles may be said 
to have been its evidence to the first Christians, 
they are not its evidence to us, but the doctrines 
themselves ; that every practice is Christian 
which praises itself, and every practice unchris- 
tian which condemns itself, i am not engaged 
to Christianity by decent forms, or saving ordi- 
nances ; it is not usage, it is not what I do not 
understand, that binds me to it, — let these be 
the sandy foundations of falsehoods. What I 
revere and obey in it is its reality, its boundless 
charity, its deep interior life, the rest it gives to 
mind, the echo it returns to my thoughts, the 
perfect accord it makes with my reason through 
all its representation of God and His Provi- 
dence ; and the persuasion and courage that 
come out thence to lead me upward and on- 
ward. Freedom is the essence of this faith. It 
has for its object simply to make men good and 
wise. Its institutions then should be as flexible 
as the wants of men. That form out of which 
the life and suitableness have departed should 
be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves 
that are falling around us. 



22 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

And therefore, although for the satisfaction 
of others I have labored to show by the history 
that this rite was not intended to be perpetual ; 
although I have gone back to weigh the ex- 
pressions of Paul, I feel that here is the true 
point of view. In the midst of considerations as 
to what Paul thought, and why he so thought, 
I cannot help feeling that it is time misspent 
to argue to or from his convictions, or those of 
Luke and John, respecting any form. I seem 
to lose the substance in seeking the shadow. 
That for which Paul lived and died so glori- 
ously ; that for which Jesus gave himself to be 
crucified ; the end that animated the thousand 
martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, 
was to redeem us from a formal religion, and 
teach us to seek our well-being in the formation 
of the soul. The whole world was full of idols 
and ordinances. The Jewish was a religion of 
forms ; it was all body, it had no life, and the 
Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send 
forth a man to teach men that they must serve 
him with the heart ; that only that life was re- 
ligious which was thoroughly good ; that sacri- 
fice was smoke, and forms were shadows. This 
man lived and died true to this purpose ; and 
now, with his blessed word and life before us. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 23 

Christians must contend that it is a matter of 
vital importance, — really a duty, to commemo- 
rate him by a certain form, whether that form 
be agreeable to their understandings or not. Is 
not this to make vain the gift of God ? Is not 
this to turn back the hand on the dial ? Is not 
this to make men, — to make ourselves, — for- 
get that not forms, but duties ; not names, but 
righteousness and love are enjoined ; and that in 
the eye of God there is no other measure of the 
value of any one form than the measure of its 
use ? 

There remain some practical objections to the 
ordinance, into which I shall not now enter. 
There is one on which I had intended to say a 
few words ; I mean the unfavorable relation in 
which it places that numerous class of persons 
who abstain from it merely from disinclination 
to the rite. 

Influenced by these considerations, I have 
proposed to the brethren of the Church to drop 
the use of the elements and the claim of author- 
ity in the administration of this ordinance, and 
have suggested a mode in which a meeting for 
the same purpose might be held, free of objec- 
tion. 

My brethren have considered my views with 



24 THE LORD'S SUPPER 

patience and candor, and have recommended, 
unanimously, an adherence to the present form. 
I have therefore been compelled to consider 
whether it becomes me to administer it. I am 
clearly of opinion I ought not. This discourse 
has already been so far extended that I can only 
say that the reason of my determination is 
shortly this : It is my desire, in the office of 
a Christian minister, to do nothing which I 
cannot do with my whole heart. Having said 
this, I have said all. I have no hostility to 
this institution ; I am only stating my want of 
sympathy with it. Neither should I ever have 
obtruded this opinion upon other people, had 
I not been called by my office to administer it. 
That is the end of my opposition, that I am 
not interested in it. I am content that it stand 
to the end of the world, if it please men and 
please Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the 
good it produces. 

As it is the prevailing opinion and feeling 
in our religious community that it is an indis- 
pensable part of the pastoral office to administer 
this ordinance, I am about to resign into your 
hands that office which you have confided to 
me. It has many duties for which I am feebly 
qualified. It has some which it will always be 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 25 

my delight to discharge according to my ability, 
wherever I exist. And whilst the recollection 
of its claims oppresses me with a sense of my 
unworthiness, I am consoled by the hope that 
no time and no change can deprive me of the 
satisfaction of pursuing and exercising its high- 
est functions.' 



II 

HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

AT CONCORD, ON THE SECOND CENTENNIAL ANNI- 
VERSARY OF THE INCORPORATION OF THE 
TOWN, SEPTEMBER 12, 1835 

BuLKELEY, Hunt, Wilkrd, Hosmer, Merriam, Flint, 
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil 
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood. 
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm 
Saying, « *Tis mine, my children's and my name's.' 

Where are these men ? Asleep beneath their grounds: 
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. 
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys 
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs. 



I WILL have never a noble. 
No lineage counted great; 
Fishers and choppers and ploughmen 
Shall constitute a state. 

Lo now ! if these poor men 
Can govern the land and sea 
And make just laws below the sun. 
As planets faithful be. 

I cause from every creature 
His proper good to flow: 
As much as he is and doeth. 
So much he shall bestow. 



HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

FELLOW CITIZENS : The town of Con- 
cord begins, this day, the third century of 
its history. By a common consent, the people 
of New England, for a few years past, as the 
second centennial anniversary of each of its early 
settlements arrived, have seen fit to observe the 
day. You have thought it becoming to com- 
memorate the planting of the first inland town. 
The sentiment is just, and the practice is wise. 
Our ears shall not be deaf to the voice of time. 
We will review the deeds of our fathers, and 
pass that just verdict on them we expect from 
posterity on our own. 

And yet, in the eternity of Nature, how recent 
our antiquities appear ! The imagination is im- 
patient of a cycle so short. Who can tell how 
many thousand years, every day, the clouds 
have shaded these fields with their purple awn- 
ing ? The river, by whose banks most of us 
were born, every winter, for ages, has spread its 
crust of ice over the great meadows which, in 
ages, it had formed. But the little society of 
men who now, for a few years, fish in this river, 
plough the fields it washes, mow the grass and 



30 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

reap the corn, shortly shall hurry from its banks 
as did their forefathers. " Man's life," said the 
Witan to the Saxon king, " is the sparrow that 
enters at a window, flutters round the house, 
and flies out at another, and none knoweth 
whence he came, or whither he goes." ' The 
more reason that we should give to our being 
what permanence we can ; — that we should 
recall the Past, and expect the Future. 

Yet the race survives whilst the individual 
dies. In the country, without any interference 
of the law, the agricultural life favors the per- 
manence of families. Here are still around me 
the lineal descendants of the first settlers of 
this town. Here is Blood, Flint, Willard, Mer- 
iam. Wood, Hosmer, Barrett, Wheeler, Jones, 
Brown, Buttrick, Brooks, Stow, Hoar, Hey- 
wood. Hunt, Miles, — the names of the inhabit- 
ants for the first thirty years ; and the family 
is in many cases represented, when the name is 
not. If the name of Bulkeley is wanting, the 
honor you have done me this day, in making 
me your organ, testifies your persevering kind- 
ness to his blood.^ 

I shall not be expected, on this occasion, to 
repeat the details of that oppression which drove 
our fathers out hither. Yet the town of Con- 



AT CONCORD 31 

cord was settled by a party of non-conformists, 
immediately from Great Britain. The best friend 
the Massachusetts colony had, though much 
against his will, was Archbishop Laud in Eng- 
land. In consequence of his famous proclama- 
tion setting up certain novelties in the rites of 
public worship, fifty godly ministers were sus- 
pended for contumacy, in the course of two 
years and a half Hindered from speaking, some 
of these dared to print the reasons of their dis- 
sent, and were punished with imprisonment or 
mutilation.' This severity brought some of the 
best men in England to overcome that natural 
repugnance to emigration which holds the seri- 
ous and moderate of every nation to their own 
soil. Among the silenced clergymen was a dis- 
tinguished minister of Woodhill, in Bedford- 
shire, Rev. Peter Bulkeley, descended from a 
noble family, honored for his own virtues, his 
learning and gifts as a preacher, and adding to 
his influence the weight of a large estate.^ Per- 
secution readily knits friendship between its 
victims. Mr. Bulkeley, having turned his estate 
into money and set his face towards New Eng- 
land, was easily able to persuade a good number 
of planters to join him. They arrived in Boston 
in 1634.^ Probably there had been a previous 



32 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

correspondence with Governor Winthrop, and 
an agreement that they should settle at Mus- 
ketaquid. With them joined Mr. Simon Wil- 
lardj a merchant from Kent in England. They 
petitioned the General Court for a grant of a 
township, and on the ad of September, 1635, 
corresponding in New Style to 12th September, 
two hundred years ago this day, leave to begin 
a plantation at Musketaquid was given to Peter 
Bulkeley, Simon Willard, and about twelve 
families more." A month later. Rev. John Jones 
and a large number of settlers destined for the 
new town arrived in Boston."* 

The grant of the General Court was but a pre- 
liminary step. The green meadows of Musket- 
aquid or Grassy Brook were far up in the woods, 
not to be reached without a painful and danger- 
ous journey through an uninterrupted wilder- 
ness. They could cross the Massachusetts or 
Charles River, by the ferry at Newtown; they 
could go up the river as far as Watertown. But 
the Indian paths leading up and down the coun- 
try were a foot broad. They must then plunge 
into the thicket, and with their axes cut a road for 
their teams, with their women and children and 
their household stuff, forced to make long cir- 
cuits too, to avoid hills and swamps. Edward 



AT CONCORD 33 

Johnson of Woburn has described in an affect- 
ing narrative their labors by the way. " Some- 
times passing through thickets where their hands 
are forced to make way for their bodies' passage, 
and their feet clambering over the crossed trees, 
which when they missed, they sunk into an un- 
certain bottom in water, and wade up to their 
knees, tumbling sometimes higher, sometimes 
lower. At the end of this, they meet a scorch- 
ing plain, yet not so plain but that the ragged 
bushes scratch their legs foully, even to wearing 
their stockings to their bare skin in two or three 
hours. Some of them, having no leggins, have 
had the blood trickle down at every step. And 
in time of summer, the sun casts such a reflect- 
ing heat from the sweet fern, whose scent is very 
strong, that some nearly fainted." ' They slept on 
the rocks, wherever the night found them. Much 
time was lost in travelling they knew not whither, 
when the sun was hidden by clouds ; for " their 
compass miscarried in crowding through the 
bushes," and the Indian paths, once lost, they 
did not easily find. 

Johnson, relating undoubtedly what he had 
himself heard from the pilgrims, intimates that 
they consumed many days in exploring the coun- 
try, to select the best place for the town. Their 

XI 



34 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

first temporary accommodation was rude enough. 
" After they have found a place of abode, they 
burrow themselves in the earth for their first 
shelter, under a hillside, and casting the soil aloft 
upon timbers, they make a fire against the earth, 
at the highest side. And thus these poor servants 
of Christ provide shelter for themselves, their 
wives and little ones, keeping off the short show- 
ers from their lodgings, but the long rains pene- 
trate through, to their great disturbance in the 
night season. Yet in these poor wigwams they 
sing psalms, pray and praise their God, till they 
can provide them houses, which they could not 
ordinarily, till the earth, by the Lord's blessing 
brought forth bread to feed them. This they 
attain with sore travail, every one that can lift a 
hoe to strike into the earth standing stoutly to 
his labors, and tearing up the roots and bushes 
from the ground, which, the first year, yielded 
them a lean crop, till the sod of the earth was 
rotten, and therefore they were forced to cut 
their bread very thin for a long season. But the 
Lord is pleased to provide for them great store 
offish in the spring-time, and especially, alewives, 
about the bigness of a herring." ' These served 
them also for manure. For flesh, they looked 
not for any, in those times, unless they could 



AT CONCORD 35 

barter with the Indians for venison and raccoons. 
*' Indian corn, even the coarsest, made as plea- 
sant meal as rice." ' All kinds of garden fruits 
grew well, " and let no man," writes our pious 
chronicler, in another place, " make a jest of 
pumpkins, for with this fruit the Lord was 
pleased to feed his people until their corn and 
cattle were increased." * 

The great cost of cattle, and the sickening of 
their cattle upon such wild fodder as was never 
cut before ; the loss of their sheep and swine by 
wolves ; the sufferings of the people in the great 
snows and cold soon following ; and the fear of 
the Pequots ; are the other disasters enumerated 
by the historian. 

The hardships of the journey and of the first 
encampment are certainly related by their con- 
temporary with some air of romance, yet they 
can scarcely be exaggerated. A march of a num- 
ber of families with their stuff, through twenty 
miles of unknown forest, from a little rising 
town that had not much to spare, to an Indian 
town in the wilderness that had nothing, must 
be laborious to all, and for those who were new 
to the country and bred in softness, a formidable 
adventure. But the pilgrims had the preparation 
of an armed mind, better than any hardihood of 



36 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

body. And the rough welcome which the new 
land gave them was a fit introduction to the life 
they must lead in it. 

But what was their reception at Musketaquid ? 
This was an old village of the Massachusetts 
Indians. Tahattawan, the Sachem, with Waban 
his son-in-law, lived near Nashawtuck, now Lee's 
Hill.' Their tribe, once numerous, the epidemic 
had reduced. Here they planted, hunted and 
fished. The moose was still trotting in the coun- 
try, and of his sinews they made their bowstring. 
Of the pith elder, that still grows beside our 
brooks, they made their arrow. Of the Indian 
hemp they spun their nets and lines for summer 
angling, and, in winter, they sat around holes in 
the ice, catching salmon, pickerel, breams and 
perch, with which our river abounded.^ Their 
physical powers, as our fathers found them, and 
before yet the English alcohol had proved more 
fatal to them than the English sword, astonished 
the white men.^ Their sight was so excellent, 
that, standing on the seashore, they often told 
of the coming of a ship at sea, sooner by one 
hour, yea, two hours' sail, than any Englishman 
that stood by, on purpose to look out.'* Roger 
Williams affirms that he has known them run 
between eighty and a hundred miles in a sum- 



AT CONCORD 37 

mer's day, and back again within two days. A 
little pounded parched corn or no-cake sufficed 
them on the march. To his bodily perfection, 
the wild man added some noble traits of char- 
acter. He was open as a child to kindness and 
justice. Many instances of his humanity were 
known to the Englishmen who suffered in the 
woods from sickness or cold. " When you came 
over the morning waters," said one of the Sa- 
chems, " we took you into our arms. We fed 
you with our best meat. Never went white man 
cold and hungry from Indian wigwam." 

The faithful dealing and brave good will, 
which, during the life of the friendly Massasoit, 
they uniformly experienced at Plymouth and at 
Boston, went to their hearts. So that the peace 
was made, and the ear of the savage already 
secured, before the pilgrims arrived at his seat of 
Musketaquid, to treat with him for his lands. 

It is said that the covenant made with the 
Indians, by Mr. Bulkeley and Major Willard, 
was made under a great oak, formerly standing 
near the site of the Middlesex Hotel.' Our 
Records affirm that Squaw Sachem, Tahattawan, 
and Nimrod did sell a tract of six miles square to 
the EngHsh, receiving for the same, some fath- 
oms of Wampumpeag, hatchets, hoes, knives, 



38 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

cotton cloth and shirts. Wibbacowet, the hus- 
band of Squaw Sachem, received a suit of cloth, 
a hat, a white linen band, shoes, stockings and 
a greatcoat ; and, in conclusion, the said Indians 
declared themselves satisfied, and told the Eng- 
lishmen they were welcome. And after the bar- 
gain was concluded, Mr. Simon Willard, pointing 
to the four corners of the world, declared that 
they had bought three miles from that place, 
east, west, north and south.' 

The Puritans, to keep the remembrance of 
their unity one with another, and of their 
peaceful compact with the Indians, named their 
forest settlement CONCORD. They pro- 
ceeded to build, under the shelter of the hill that 
extends for a mile along the north side of the 
Boston road, their first dwellings. The labors 
of a new plantation were paid by its excitements. 
I seem to see them, with their pious pastor, 
addressing themselves to the work of clearing 
the land. Natives of another hemisphere, they 
beheld, with curiosity, all the pleasing features 
of the American forest. The landscape before 
them was fair, if it was strange and rude. The 
little flower which at this season stars our woods 
and roadsides with its profuse blooms, might at- 
tract even ey^s as stern as theirs with its humble 



AT CONCORD 39 

beauty. The useful pine lifted its cones into the 
frosty air. The maple, which is already making 
the forest gay with its orange hues, reddened over 
those houseless men. The majestic summits of 
Wachusett and Monadnoc towering in the hori- 
zon, invited the steps of adventure westward. 

As the season grew later, they felt its incon- 
veniences. " Many were forced to go barefoot 
and bareleg, and some in time of frost and snow, 
yet were they more healthy than now they are." ' 
The land was low but healthy ; and if, in com- 
mon with all the settlements, they found the air 
of America very cold, they might say with Hig- 
ginson, after his description of the other ele- 
ments, that " New England may boast of the 
element of fire, more than all the rest ; for all 
Europe is not able to afford to make so great 
fires as New England. A poor servant, that is 
to possess but fifty acres, may aflFord to give 
more wood for fire as good as the world yields, 
than many noblemen in England." ^ Many were 
their wants, but more their privileges. The 
light struggled in through windows of oiled 
paper,^ but they read the word of God by it. 
They were fain to make use of their knees for 
a table, but their limbs were their own. Hard 
labor and spare diet they had, and off wooden 



40 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

trenchers, but they had peace and freedom, and 
the wailing of the tempest in the woods sounded 
kindlier in their ear than the smooth voice of 
the prelates, at home, in England. " There is no 
people," said their pastor to his little flock of 
exiles, " but will strive to excel in something. 
What can we excel in, if not in holiness ? If we 
look to number, we are the fewest; if to strength, 
we are the weakest ; if to wealth and riches, we 
are the poorest of all the people of God through 
the whole world. We cannot excel nor so much 
as equal other people in these things ; and if we 
come short in grace and holiness too, we are the 
most despicable people under heaven. Strive 
we, therefore, herein to excel, and suffer not this 
crown to be taken away from us.'' ' The sermon 
fell into good and tender hearts ; the people 
conspired with their teacher. Their religion was 
sweetness and peace amidst toil and tears. And, 
as we are informed, " the edge of their appetite 
was greater to spiritual duties at their first com- 
ing, in time of wants, than afterwards.*' 

The original Town Records, for the first 
thirty years, are lost. We have records of mar- 
riages and deaths, beginning nineteen years after 
the settlement; and copies of some of the doings 
of the town in regard to territory, of the same 



AT CONCORD 41 

date. But the original distribution of the land, 
or an account of the principles on which it was 
divided, are not preserved. Agreeably to the 
custom of the times, a large portion was reserved 
to the public, and it appears from a petition of 
some newcomers, in 1643, ^^^^ ^ P^^^ ^^^ been 
divided among the first settlers without price, 
on the single condition of improving it.' Other 
portions seem to have been successively divided 
off and granted to individuals, at the rate of 
sixpence or a shilling an acre. But, in the first 
years, the land would not pay the necessary 
public charges, and they seem to have fallen 
heavily on the few wealthy planters. Mr. Bulke- 
ley, by his generosity, spent his estate, and, 
doubtless in consideration of his charges, the 
General Court, in 1639, granted him 300 acres 
towards Cambridge; and to Mr. Spencer, prob- 
ably for the like reason, 300 acres by the Ale- 
wife River. In 1638, 1200 acres were granted 
to Governor Winthrop, and 1000 to Thomas 
Dudley, of the lands adjacent to the town, and 
Governor Winthrop selected as a building spot 
the land near the house of Captain Humphrey 
Hunt.* The first record now remaining is that 
of a reservation of land for the minister, and 
the appropriation of new lands as commons or 



42 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

pastures to some poor men. At the same date, 
in 1654, the town having divided itself into three 
districts, called the North, South and East 
quarters, ordered, " that the North quarter are 
to keep and maintain all their highways and 
bridges over the great river, in their quarter, 
and, in respect of the greatness of their charge 
thereabout, and in regard of the ease of the East 
quarter above the rest, in their highways, they 
are to allow the North quarter ^3'" ' 

Fellow citizens, this first recorded political 
act of our fathers, this tax assessed on its inhab- 
itants by a town, is the most important event 
in their civil history, implying, as it does, the 
exercise of a sovereign power, and connected with 
all the immunities and powers of a corporate 
town in Massachusetts. The greater speed and 
success that distinguish the planting of the human 
race in this country, over all other plantations 
in history, owe themselves mainly to the new 
subdivisions of the State into small corporations 
of land and power. It is vain to look for the in- 
ventor. No man made them. Each of the parts 
of that perfect structure grew out of the necessi- 
ties of an instant occasion. The germ was formed 
in England. The charter gave to the freemen 
of the Company of Massachusetts Bay the elec- 



AT CONCORD 43 

tion of the Governor and Council of Assistants. 
It moreover gave them the power of prescribing 
the manner in which freemen should be elected;, 
and ordered that all fundamental laws should be 
enacted by the freemen of the colony. But the 
Company removed to New England ; more than 
one hundred freemen were admitted the first 
year, and it was found inconvenient to assemble 
them all.' And when, presently, the design of 
the colony began to fulfil itself, by the settle- 
ment of new plantations in the vicinity of Bos- 
ton, and parties, with grants of land, straggled 
into the country to truck with the Indians and 
to clear the land for their own benefit, the Gov- 
ernor and freemen in Boston found it neither 
desirable nor possible to control the trade and 
practices of these farmers. What could the body 
of freemen, meeting four times a year, at Boston, 
do for the daily wants of the planters at Mus- 
ketaquid? The wolf was to be killed; the In- 
dian to be watched and resisted ; wells to be dug; 
the forest to be felled; pastures to be cleared; 
corn to be raised ; roads to be cut ; town and farm 
lines to be run. These things must be done, 
govern who might. The nature of man and his 
condition in the world, for the first time within 
the period of certain history, controlled the forma- 



44 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

tion of the State. The necessity of the colonists 
wrote the law. Their wants, their poverty, their 
manifest convenience made them bold to ask of 
the Governor and of the General Court, immun- 
ities, and, to certain purposes, sovereign powers. 
The townsmen's words were heard and weighed, 
for all knew that it was a petitioner that could 
not be slighted ; it was the river, or the winter, 
or famine, or the Pequots, that spoke through 
them to the Governor and Council of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. Instructed by necessity, each little 
company organized itself after the pattern of 
the larger town, by appointing its constable, 
and other petty half-military officers. As early 
as 1633,' the office of townsman or selectman 
appears, who seems first to have been appointed 
by the General Court, as here, at Concord, in 
1639. In 1635, the Court say, " whereas par- 
ticular towns have many things which concern 
only themselves, it is Ordered, that the freemen 
of every town shall have power to dispose of 
their own lands, and woods, and choose their 
own particular officers." ^ This pointed chiefly 
at the office of constable, but they soon chose 
their own selectmen, and very early assessed 
taxes ; a power at first resisted,^ but speedily 
confirmed to them. 



AT CONCORD 45 

Meantime, to this paramount necessity, a 
milder and more pleasing influence was joined. I 
esteem it the happiness of this country that its 
settlers, whilst they were exploring their granted 
and natural rights and determining the power 
of the magistrate, were united by personal affec- 
tion. Members of a church before whose search- 
ing covenant all rank was abolished, they stood 
in awe of each other, as religious men. They 
bore to John Winthrop, the Governor, a grave 
but hearty kindness. For the first time, men 
examined the powers of the chief whom they 
loved and revered. For the first time, the ideal 
social compact was real. The bands of love and 
reverence held fast the little state, whilst they 
untied the great cords of authority to examine 
their soundness and learn on what wheels they 
ran. They were to settle the internal constitu- 
tion of the towns, and, at the same time, their 
power in the commonwealth. The Governor 
conspires with them in limiting his claims to 
their obedience, and values much more their 
love than his chartered authority. The disputes 
between that forbearing man and the deputies 
are like the quarrels of girls, so much do they 
turn upon complaints of unkindness, and end 
in such loving reconciliations. It was on doubts 



46 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

concerning their own power, that, in 1634, a 
committee repaired to him for counsel, and he 
advised, seeing the freemen were grown so nu- 
merous, to send deputies from every town once 
in a year to revise the laws and to assess all 
monies/ And the General Court, thus consti- 
tuted, only needed to go into separate session 
from the Council, as they did in 1644,'' to become 
essentially the same assembly they are this day. 
By this course of events. Concord and the 
other plantations found themselves separate and 
independent of Boston, with certain rights of 
their own, which, what they were, time alone 
could fully determine ; enjoying, at the same 
time, a strict and loving fellowship with Boston, 
and sure of advice and aid, on every emergency. 
Their powers were speedily settled by obvious 
convenience, and the towns learned to exercise 
a sovereignty in the laying of taxes ; in the 
choice of their deputy to the house of represent- 
atives; in the disposal of the town lands; in the 
care of public worship, the school and the poor ; 
and, what seemed of at least equal importance, 
to exercise the right of expressing an opinion 
on every question before the country. In a 
town-meeting, the great secret of political sci- 
ence was uncovered, and the problem solved. 



AT CONCORD 47 

how to give every individual his fair weight in 
the government, without any disorder from num- 
bers. In a town-meeting, the roots of society 
were reached. Here the rich gave counsel, but 
the poor also ; and moreover, the just and the 
unjust. He is ill informed who expects, on run- 
ning down the Town Records for two hundred 
years, to find a church of saints, a metropolis 
of patriots, enacting wholesome and creditable 
laws. The constitution of the towns forbid it. 
In this open democracy, every opinion had utter- 
ance ; every objection, every fact, every acre of 
land, every bushel of rye, its entire weight. The 
moderator was the passive mouth-piece, and the 
vote of the town, like the vane on the turret 
overhead, free for every wind to turn, and always 
turned by the last and strongest breath. In these 
assemblies, the public weal, the call of interest, 
duty, religion, were heard ; and every local 
feeling, every private grudge, every suggestion 
of petulance and ignorance, were not less faith- 
fully produced. Wrath and love came up to 
town-meeting in company. By the law of 1641, 
every man — freeman or not — inhabitant or 
not — might introduce any business into a public 
meeting. Not a complaint occurs in all the 
volumes of our Records, of any inhabitant being 



48 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

hindered from speaking, or suffering from any 
violence or usurpation of any class. The nega- 
tive ballot of a ten-shilling freeholder was as 
fatal as that of the honored owner of Blood's 
Farms or Willard's Purchase. A man felt him- 
self at liberty to exhibit, at town-meeting, feel- 
ings and actions that he would have been 
ashamed of anywhere but amongst his neigh- 
bors. Individual protests are frequent. Peter 
Wright [1705] desired his dissent might be re- 
corded from the town's grant to John Shepard.' 
In 1795, several town-meetings are called, upon 
the compensation to be made to a few proprietors 
for land taken in making a bridle-road ; and one 
of them demanding large damages, many offers 
were made him in town-meeting, and refused ; 
" which the town thought very unreasonable." 
The matters there debated are such as to invite 
very small considerations. The ill-spelled pages 
of the Town Records contain the result. I shall 
be excused for confessing that I have set a value 
upon any symptom of meanness and private 
pique which I have met with in these antique 
books, as proof that justice was done ; that if 
the results of our history are approved as wise 
and good, it was yet a free strife ; if the good 
counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not 



AT CONCORD 49 

fail to be suggested; freedom and virtue, if they 
triumphed, triumphed in a fair field. And so 
be it an everlasting testimony for them, and 
so much ground of assurance of man's capacity 
for self-government. 

It is the consequence of this institution that 
not a school-house, a public pew, a bridge, a 
pound, a mill-dam, hath been set up, or pulled 
down, or altered, or bought, or sold, without 
the whole population of this town having a 
voice in the affair. A general contentment is 
the result. And the people truly feel that they 
are lords of the soil. In every winding road, in 
every stone fence, in the smokes of the poor- 
house chimney, in the clock on the church, they 
read their own power, and consider, at leisure, 
the wisdom and error of their judgments. 

The British government has recently pre- 
sented to the several public libraries of this 
country, copies of the splendid edition of the 
Domesday Book, and other ancient public re- 
cords of England. I cannot but think that it 
would be a suitable acknowledgment of this 
national munificence, if the records of one of 
our towns, — of this town, for example, — 
should be printed, and presented to the gov- 
ernments of Europe ; to the English nation, as 

XI 



50 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

a thank-oiFering, and as a certificate of the pro^ 
gress of the Saxon race ; to the Continental na- 
tions as a lesson of humanity and love. Tell 
them, the Union has twenty-four States, and 
Massachusetts is one. Tell them, Massachu- 
setts has three hundred towns, and Concord is 
one ; that in Concord are five hundred ratable 
polls, and every one has an equal vote. 

About ten years after the planting of Con- 
cord, eflforts began to be made to civilize the 
Indians, and " to win them to the knowledge of 
the true God." This indeed, in so many words, 
is expressed in the charter of the colony as one 
of its ends ; and this design is named first in 
the printed " Considerations,*' ' that inclined 
Hampden, and determined Winthrop and his 
friends, to come hither. The interest of the 
Puritans in the natives was heightened by a 
suspicion at that time prevailing that these were 
the lost ten tribes of Israel. The man of the 
woods might well draw on himself the compas- 
sion of the planters. His erect and perfect 
form, though disclosing some irregular virtues, 
was found joined to a dwindled soul. Master 
of all sorts of wood-craft, he seemed a part of 
the forest and the lake, and the secret of his 
amazing skill seemed to be that he partook of 



AT CONCORD 51 

the nature and fierce instincts of the beasts he 
slew. Those who dwelled by ponds and rivers 
had some tincture of civility, but the hunters of 
the tribe were found intractable at catechism. 
Thomas Hooker anticipated the opinion of 
Humboldtj and called them " the ruins of man- 
kind." 

Early efforts were made to instruct them, in 
which Mr. Bulkeley, Mr. Flint, and Captain 
Willard, took an active part. In 1644, Squaw 
Sachem, the widow of Nanepashemet, the great 
Sachem of Concord and Mystic, with two sa- 
chems of Wachusett, made a formal submission 
to the EngHsh government, and intimated their 
desire, "as opportunity served, and the English 
lived among them, to learn to read God's word, 
and know God aright ; " and the General Court 
acted on their request.' John EHot, in October, 
1646, preached his first sermon in the Indian 
language at Noonantum ; Waban, Tahattawan, 
and their sannaps, going thither from Concord 
to hear him. There under the rubbish and ruins 
of barbarous life, the human heart heard the 
voice of love, and awoke as from a sleep. The 
questions which the Indians put betray their 
reason and their ignorance. " Can Jesus Christ 
understand prayers in the Indian language ? " 



52 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

" If a man be wise, and his sachem weak, must 
he obey him ? " At a meeting which Eliot gave 
to the squaws apart, the wife of Wampooas 
propounded the question, "Whether do I pray 
when my husband prays, if I speak nothing 
as he doth, yet if I like what he saith ? " — 
" which questions were accounted of by some, 
as part of the whitenings of the harvest to- 
ward." ' Tahattawan, our Concord sachem, 
called his Indians together, and bid them not 
oppose the courses which the English were 
taking for their good ; for, said he, all the time 
you have lived after the Indian fashion, under 
the power of the higher sachems, what did they 
care for you ? They took away your skins, your 
kettles and your wampum, at their own plea- 
sure, and this was all they regarded. But you 
may see the English mind no such things, but 
only seek your welfare, and instead of taking 
away, are ready to give to you. Tahattawan 
and his son-in-law Waban, besought Eliot to 
come and preach to them at Concord, and here 
they entered, by his assistance, into an agree- 
ment to twenty-nine rules, all breathing a de- 
sire to conform themselves to English cus- 
toms.'' They requested to have a town given 
them within the bounds of Concord, near unto 



AT CONCORD 53 

the English. When this question was pro- 
pounded by Tahattawan, he was asked, why- 
he desired a town so near, when there was more 
room for them up in the country? The sachem 
replied that he knew if the Indians dwelt far 
from the English, they would not so much care 
to pray, nor could they be so ready to hear the 
word of God, but would be, all one, Indians 
still ; but dwelling near the English, he hoped 
it might be otherwise with them then. We, 
who see in the squalid remnants of the twenty 
cribes of Massachusetts, the final failure of this 
benevolent enterprise, can hardly learn without 
emotion the earnestness with which the most 
sensible individuals of the copper race held on 
to the new hope they had conceived, of being 
elevated to equality with their civilized brother. 
It is piteous to see their self-distrust in their re- 
quest to remain near the English, and their unan- 
imous entreaty to Captain Willard, to be their 
Recorder, being very solicitous that what they 
did agree upon might be faithfully kept without 
alteration. It was remarkable that the preaching 
was not wholly new to them. "Their forefathers," 
the Indians told Eliot, "did know God, but 
after this, they fell into a deep sleep, and when 
they did awake, they quite forgot him." ' 



54 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

At the instance of Eliot, in 1651, their desire 
was granted by the General Court, and Nashobah, 
lying near Nagog Pond, now partly in Littleton, 
partly in Acton, became an Indian town, where 
a Christian worship was established under an 
Indian ruler and teacher. Wilson relates that, 
at their meetings, " the Indians sung a psalm, 
made Indian by Eliot, in one of our ordinary 
English tunes, melodiously." ^ Such was, for half 
a century, the success of the general enterprise, 
that, in 1676, there were five hundred and sixty- 
seven praying Indians, and in 1689, twenty-four 
Indian preachers, and eighteen assemblies. 

Meantime, Concord increased in territory and 
population. The lands were divided ; highways 
were cut from farm to farm, and from this town 
to Boston. A military company had been or- 
ganized in 1636. The Pequots, the terror of 
the farmer, were exterminated in 1637. Captain 
Underbill, in 1638, declared, that "the new 
plantations of Dedham and Concord do afford 
large accommodation, and will contain abundance 
of people."^ In 1639, our first selectmen, Mr. 
Flint, Lieutenant Willard, and Richard Griffin 
were appointed. And in 1640, when the colony 
rate was ^^laoo. Concord was assessed ^50.^ 
The country already began to yield more than 



AT CONCORD 55 

was consumed by the inhabitants.' The very- 
great immigration from England made the lands 
more valuable every year, and supplied a market 
for the produce. In 1643, ^^^ colony was so 
numerous that it became expedient to divide it 
into four counties, Concord being included in 
Middlesex.'' In 1644, the town contained sixty 
families. 

But, in 1 640, all immigration ceased, and the 
country produce and farm-stock depreciated.^ 
Other difficulties accrued. The fish, which had 
been the abundant manure of the settlers, was 
found to injure the land.^ The river, at this 
period, seems to have caused some distress now 
by its overflow, now by its drought.^ A cold and 
wet summer blighted the corn ; enormous flocks 
of pigeons beat down and eat up all sorts of 
English grain ; and the crops suffered much from 
mice.^ New plantations and better land had been 
opened, far and near ; and whilst many of the 
colonists at Boston thought to remove, or did 
remove to England, the Concord people became 
uneasy, and looked around for new seats. In 
1643, o^^ seventh or one eighth part of the 
inhabitants went to Connecticut with Reverend 
Mr. Jones, and settled Fairfield. Weakened by 
this loss, the people begged tp be released from 



56 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

a part of their rates, to which the General Court 
consented. Mr. Bulkeley dissuaded his people 
from removing, and admonished them to increase 
their faith with their griefs. Even this check 
which befell them acquaints us with the rapidity 
of their growth, for the good man, in dealing 
with his people, taxes them with luxury. " We 
pretended to come hither," he says, " for ordi- 
nances ; but now ordinances are light matters 
with us ; we are turned after the prey. We have 
among us excess and pride of life ; pride in 
apparel, daintiness in diet, and that in those who, 
in times past, would have been satisfied with 
bread. 'This is the sin of the lowest of the people.'' * 
Better evidence could not be desired of the rapid 
growth of the settlement. 

The check was but momentary. The earth 
teemed with fruits. The people on the bay built 
ships, and found the way to the West Indies, 
with pipe-staves, lumber and fish ; and the coun- 
try people speedily learned to supply themselves 
with sugar, tea and molasses. The college had 
been already gathered in 1638. Now the school- 
house went up. The General Court, in 1647, 
" to the end that learning may not be buried in 
the graves of our forefathers. Ordered, that every 
township, after the Lord had increased them to 



AT CONCORD 57 

the number of fifty house-holders, shall appoint 
one to teach all children to write and read ; and 
where any town shall increase to the number of 
one hundred families, they shall set up a Gram- 
mar school, the masters thereof being able to 
instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for 
the University/* With these requirements Con- 
cord not only complied, but, in 1653, subscribed 
a sum for several years to the support of Har- 
vard College.' 

But a new and alarming public distress re- 
tarded the growth of this, as of the sister towns, 
during more than twenty years from 1654 to 
1676. In 1654, the four united New England 
Colonies agreed to raise 270 foot and 40 horse, 
to reduce Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics, and 
appointed Major Simon Willard, of this town, 
to the command/ This war seems to have been 
pressed by three of the colonies, and reluctantly 
entered by Massachusetts. Accordingly, Major 
Willard did the least he could, and incurred the 
censure of the Commissioners, who write to their 
" loving friend Major Willard," " that they leave 
to his consideration the inconveniences arising 
from his non-attendance to his commission." ^ 
This expedition was but the introduction of the 
war with King Philip. In 1670, the Wampanoags 



58 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

began to grind their hatchets, and mend their 
guns, and insult the EngHsh. Philip surrendered 
seventy guns to the Commissioners in Taunton 
Meeting-house," but revenged his humiliation a 
few years after, by carrying fire and the tomahawk 
into the English villages. From Narragansett 
to the Connecticut River, the scene of war was 
shifted as fast as these red hunters could traverse 
the forest. Concord was a military post. The in- 
activity of Major Willard, in Ninigret*s war, had 
lost him no confidence. He marched from Con- 
cord to Brookfield, in season to save the people 
whose houses had been burned, and who had 
taken shelter in a fortified house."" But he fought 
with disadvantage against an enemy who must 
be hunted before every battle. Some flourishing 
towns were burned. John Monoco, a formidable 
savage, boasted that " he had burned Medfield 
and Lancaster, and would burn Groton, Con- 
cord, Watertown and Boston ; " adding, " what 
me will, me do." He did burn Groton, but be- 
fore he had executed the remainder of his threat 
he was hanged, in Boston, in September, 1676.^ 
A still more formidable enemy was removed, 
in the same year, by the capture of Canonchet, 
the faithful ally of Philip, who was soon after- 
wards shot at Stonington. He stoutly declared 



AT CONCORD 59 

to the Commissioners that " he would not de- 
liver up a Wampanoag, nor the paring of a 
Wampanoag*s nail/' and when he was told that 
his sentence was death, he said " he liked it well 
that he was to die before his heart was soft, or 
he had spoken anything unworthy of himself." ' 

We know beforehand who must conquer in 
that unequal struggle. The red man may de- 
stroy here and there a straggler, as a wild beast 
may ; he may fire a farm-house, or a village ; but 
the association of the white men and their arts 
of war give them an overwhelming advantage, 
and in the first blast of their trumpet we already 
hear the flourish of victory. 1 confess what 
chiefly interests me, in the annals of that war, 
is the grandeur of spirit exhibited by a few of 
the Indian chiefs. A nameless Wampanoag who 
was put to death by the Mohicans, after cruel 
tortures, was asked by his butchers, during the 
torture, how he liked the war ? — he said, " he 
found it as sweet as sugar was to Englishmen." * 

The only compensation which war offers for 
its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal 
qualities to which it gives scope and occasion. 
The virtues of patriotism and of prodigious 
courage and address were exhibited on both 
sides, and, in many instances, by women. The 



6o HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

historian of Concord has preserved an instance 
of the resolution of one of the daughters of the 
town. Two young farmers, Abraham and Isaac 
Shepherd, had set their sister Mary, a girl of 
fifteen years, to watch whilst they threshed grain 
in the barn. The Indians stole upon her before 
she was aware, and her brothers were slain. She 
was carried captive into the Indian country, but, 
at night, whilst her captors were asleep, she 
plucked a saddle from under the head of one 
of them, took a horse they had stolen from 
Lancaster, and having girt the saddle on, she 
mounted, swam across the Nashua River, and 
rode through the forest to her home." 

With the tragical end of Philip, the war 
ended. Beleaguered in his own country, his corn 
cut down, his piles of meal and other provision 
wasted by the English, it was only a great thaw 
in January, that, melting the snow and opening 
the earth, enabled his poor followers to come at 
the ground-nuts, else they had starved. Hunted 
by Captain Church, he fled from one swamp to 
another; his brother, his uncle, his sister, and 
his beloved squaw being taken or slain, he was 
at last shot down by an Indian deserter, as he 
fled alone in the dark of the morning, not far 
from his own fort.^ 



AT CONCORD 6i 

Concord suffered little from the war. This is 
to be attributed no doubt, in part, to the fact 
that troops were generally quartered here, and 
that it was the residence of many noted soldiers. 
Tradition finds another cause in the sanctity of 
its minister. The elder Bulkeley was gone. In 
1659/ his bones were laid at rest in the forest. 
But the mantle of his piety and of the people's 
affection fell upon his son Edward/ the fame of 
whose prayers, it is said, once saved Concord 
from an attack of the Indian.^ A great defence 
undoubtedly was the village of Praying Indians, 
until this settlement fell a victim to the enven- 
omed prejudice against their countrymen. The 
worst feature in the history of those years, is, 
that no man spake for the Indian. When the 
Dutch, or the French, or the English royalist 
disagreed with the Colony, there was always 
found a Dutch, or French, or tory party, — an 
earnest minority, — to keep things from extrem- 
ity. But the Indian seemed to inspire such a 
feeling as the wild beast inspires in the people 
near his den. It is the misfortune of Concord 
to have permitted a disgraceful outrage upon 
the friendly Indians settled within its limits, in 
February, 1676, which ended in their forcible 
expulsion from the town.* 



62 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

This painful incident is but too just an ex- 
ample of the measure which the Indians have 
generally received from the whites. For them 
the heart of charity, of humanity, was stone. 
After Philip's death, their strength was irrecov- 
erably broken. They never more disturbed the 
interior settlements, and a few vagrant famiHes, 
that are now pensioners on the bounty of Mas- 
sachusetts, are all that is left of the twenty tribes. 

'* Alas! for them — their day is o'er. 
Their fires are out from hill and shore. 
No more for them the wild deer bounds. 
The plough is on their hunting grounds; 
The pale man's axe rings in their woods. 
The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods. 
Their pleasant springs are dry." ' 

I turn gladly to the progress of our civil his- 
tory. Before 1666, 15,000 acres had been added 
by grants of the General Court to the original 
territory of the town,^ so that Concord then in- 
cluded the greater part of the towns of Bedford, 
Acton, Lincoln and Carlisle. 

In the great growth of the country. Concord 
participated, as is manifest from its increasing 
polls and increased rates. Randolph at this 
period writes to the English government, con- 
cerning the country towns ; " The farmers are 



AT CONCORD 63 

numerous and wealthy, live in good houses ; are 
given to hospitality; and make good advantage 
by their corn, cattle, poultry, butter and cheese/" 
Edward Bulkeley was the pastor, until his death, 
in 1696. His youngest brother, Peter, was de- 
puty from Concord, and was chosen speaker of 
the house of deputies in 1676. The following 
year, he was sent to England, with Mr. Stough- 
ton, as agent for the Colony ; and on his return, 
in 1685, was a royal councillor. But I am sorry 
to find that the servile Randolph speaks of him 
with marked respect."* It would seem that his visit 
to England had made him a courtier. In 1689, 
Concord partook of the general indignation of the 
province against Andros. A company marched 
to the capital under Lieutenant Heald, forming 
a part of that body concerning which we are 
informed, " the country people came armed into 
Boston, on the afternoon (of Thursday, i8th 
April) in such rage and heat, as made us all 
tremble to think what would follow ; for nothing 
would satisfy them but that the governor must be 
bound in chains or cords, and put in a more secure 
place, and that they would see done before they 
went away; and to satisfy them he was guarded by 
them to the fort." ^ But the Town Records of that 
day confine themselves to descriptions of lands. 



64 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

and to conferences with the neighboring towns to 
run boundary lines. In 1699, so broad was their 
territory, I find the selectmen running the lines 
with Chelmsford, Cambridge and Watertown/ 
Some interesting peculiarities in the manners and 
customs of the time appear in the town's books. 
Proposals of marriage were made by the parents 
of the parties, and minutes of such private agree- 
ments sometimes entered on the clerk's records.^ 
The public charity seems to have been bestowed 
in a manner now obsolete. The town lends its 
commons as pastures, to poor men ; and " being 
informed of the great present want of Thomas 
Pellit, gave order to Stephen Hosmer to deliver 
a town cow, of a black color, with a white face, 
unto said Pellit, for his present supply." ^ 

From the beginning to the middle of the eight- 
eenth century, our records indicate no interrup- 
tion of the tranquillity of the inhabitants, either 
in church or in civil affairs. After the death of 
Rev. Mr. Estabrook,in 171 1, it was propounded 
at the town-meeting, " whether one of the three 
gentlemen lately improved here in preaching, 
namely, Mr. John Whiting, Mr. Holyoke and 
Mr. Prescott, shall be now chosen in the work 
of the ministry? Voted affirmatively."'^ Mr. 
Whiting, who was chosen, was, we are told in 



AT CONCORD 65 

his epitaph, "a universal lover of mankind." 
The charges of education and of legislation, at 
this period, seem to have afflicted the town ; for 
they vote to petition the General Court to be 
eased of the law relating to providing a school- 
master ; happily, the Court refused; and in 171 2, 
the selectmen agreed with Captain James Minott, 
" for his son Timothy to keep the school at the 
school-house for the town of Concord, for half 
a year beginning 2d June ; and if any scholar 
shall come, within the said time, for larning ex- 
ceeding his son's ability, the said Captain doth 
agree to instruct them himself in the tongues, 
till the above said time be fulfilled ; for which 
service, the town is to pay Captain Minott ten 
pounds." ' Captain Minott seems to have served 
our prudent fathers in the double capacity of 
teacher and representative. It is an article in the 
selectmen's warrant for the town-meeting, "to 
see if the town will lay in for a representative 
not exceeding four pounds." Captain Minott 
was chosen, and after the General Court was 
adjourned received of the town for his services, 
an allowance of three shillings per day. The 
country was not yet so thickly settled but that 
the inhabitants suffered from wolves and wild- 
cats, which infested the woods; since bounties of 



XI 



66 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

twenty shillings are given as late as 1735, to In- 
dians and whites, for the heads of these animals, 
after the constable has cut off the ears.' 

Mr. Whiting was succeeded in the pastoral 
office by Rev. Daniel Bliss, in 1738. Soon after 
his ordination, the town seems to have been 
divided by ecclesiastical discords. In 1741, the 
celebrated Whitfield preached here, in the open 
air, to a great congregation."* Mr. Bliss heard 
that great orator with delight, and by his earnest 
sympathy with him, in opinion and practice, gave 
offence to a part of his people. Party and mu- 
tual councils were called, but no grave charge 
was made good against him. I find, in the 
Church Records, the charges preferred against 
him, his answer thereto, and the result of the 
Council. The charges seem to have been made 
by the lovers of order and moderation against 
Mr. Bliss, as a favorer of religious excitements. 
His answer to one of the counts breathes such 
true piety that I cannot forbear to quote it. The 
ninth allegation is " That in praying for himself, 
in a church-meeting, in December last, he said, 
* he was a poor vile worm of the dust, that was 
allowed as Mediator between God and this peo- 
ple.* " To this Mr. Bliss replied, " In the prayer 
you speak of, Jesus Christ was acknowledged as 



AT CONCORD 67 

the only Mediator between God and man ; at 
which time, I was filled with wonder, that such 
a sinful and worthless worm as I am, was allowed 
to represent Christ, in any manner, even so far 
as to be bringing the petitions and thank-offer- 
ings of the people unto God, and God's will 
and truths to the people ; and used the word 
Mediator in some differing light from that you 
have given it; but I confess I was soon uneasy 
that I had used the word, lest some would put 
a wrong meaning thereupon." ' The Council 
admonished Mr. Bliss of some improprieties of 
expression, but bore witness to his purity and 
fidehty in his office. In 1 764, Whitfield preached 
again at Concord, on Sunday afternoon ; Mr. 
Bliss preached in the morning, and the Concord 
people thought their minister gave them the 
better sermon of the two. It was also his last.'' 
The planting of the colony was the effect of 
religious principle. The Revolution was the fruit 
of another principle, — the devouring thirst for 
justice. From the appearance of the article in 
the Selectmen's warrant, in 1765, "to see if the 
town will give the Representative any instruc- 
tions about any important affair to be transacted 
by the General Court, concerning the Stamp 
Act," ^ to the peace of 1783, the Town Records 



68 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

breathe a resolute and warlike spirit, so bold 
from the first as hardly to admit of increase. 

It would be impossible on this occasion to 
recite all these patriotic papers. I must content 
myself with a few brief extracts. On the 24th 
January, 1774, in answer to letters received from 
the united committees of correspondence, in the 
vicinity of Boston, the town say : 

" We cannot possibly view with indifference 
the past and present obstinate endeavors of the 
enemies of this, as well as the mother country, 
to rob us of those rights, that are the distin- 
guishing glory and felicity of this land; rights, 
that we are obliged to no power, under heaven, 
for the enjoyment of; as they are the fruit of 
the heroic enterprises of the first settlers of these 
American colonies. And though we cannot but 
be alarmed at the great majority, in the British 
parliament, for the imposition of unconstitutional 
taxes on the colonies, yet, it gives life and strength 
to every attempt to oppose them, that not only 
the people of this, but the neighboring provinces 
are remarkably united in the important and in- 
teresting opposition, which, as it succeeded be- 
fore, in some measure, by the blessing of heaven, 
so, we cannot but hope it will be attended with 
still greater success, in future. 



AT CONCORD 69 

" Resolved, That these colonies have been and 
still are illegally taxed by the British parliament, 
as they are not virtually represented therein. 

" That the purchasing commodities subject 
to such illegal taxation is an explicit, though an 
impious and sordid resignation of the liberties 
of this free and happy people. 

" That, as the British parliament have em- 
powered the East India Company to export their 
tea into America, for the sole purpose of raising 
a revenue from hence ; to render the design 
abortive, we will not, in this town, either by our- 
selves, or any from or under us, buy, sell, or use 
any of the East India Company's tea, or any 
other tea, whilst there is a duty for raising a 
revenue thereon in America ; neither will we 
suffer any such tea to be used in our families. 

"That all such persons as shall purchase, sell, 
or use any such tea, shall, for the future, be 
deemed unfriendly to the happy constitution of 
this country. 

" That, in conjunction with our brethren in 
America, we will risk our fortunes, and even our 
lives, in defence of his majesty. King George 
the Third, his person, crown and dignity; and 
will, also, with the same resolution, as his free- 
born subjects in this country, to the utmost of 



70 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

our power, defend all our rights inviolate to the 
latest posterity. 

" That, if any person or persons, inhabitants 
of this province, so long as there is a duty on 
tea, shall import any tea from the India House, 
in England, or be factors for the East India 
Company, we will treat them, in an eminent 
degree, as enemies to their country, and with 
contempt and detestation. 

" That we think it our duty, at this critical 
time of our public affairs, to return our hearty 
thanks to the town of Boston, for every rational 
measure they have taken for the preserva- 
tion or recovery of our invaluable rights and 
liberties infringed upon ; and we hope, should 
the state of our public affairs require it, that 
they will still remain watchful and persevering ; 
with a steady zeal to espy out everything that 
shall have a tendency to subvert our happy con- 



stitution." ^ 



On the ayth June, near three hundred per- 
sons, upwards of twenty-one years of age, in- 
habitants of Concord, entered into a covenant, 
" solemnly engaging with each other, in the 
presence of God, to suspend all commercial 
intercourse with Great Britain, until the act for 
blocking the harbor of Boston be repealed ; and 



AT CONCORD 71 

neither to buy nor consume any merchandise 
imported from Great Britain, nor to deal with 
those who do/* ' 

In August, a County Convention met in this 
town, to deliberate upon the alarming state of 
public affairs, and published an admirable re- 
port."* In September, incensed at the new royal 
law which made the judges dependent on the 
crown, the inhabitants assembled on the com- 
mon, and forbade the justices to open the court 
of sessions. This little town then assumed the 
sovereignty. It was judge and jury and council 
and king. On the 26th of the month, the 
whole town resolved itself into a committee of 
safety, " to suppress all riots, tumults, and dis- 
orders in said town, and to aid all untainted 
magistrates in the execution of the laws of the 
land." It was then voted, to raise one or more 
companies of minute-men, by enlistment, to 
be paid by the town whenever called out of 
town ; and to provide arms and ammunition, 
" that those who are unable to purchase them 
themselves, may have the advantage of them, if 
necessity calls for it." In October, the Provin- 
cial Congress met in Concord. John Hancock 
was President. This body was composed of the 
foremost patriots, and adopted those efficient 



72 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

measures whose progress and issue belong to 
the history of the nation.' 

The clergy of New England were, for the 
most part, zealous promoters of the Revolution. 
A deep religious sentiment sanctified the thirst 
for liberty. AH the military movements in this 
town were solemnized by acts of public wor- 
ship. In January, 1775, a meeting was held for 
the enlisting of minute-men. Reverend William 
Emerson, the chaplain of the Provincial Con- 
gress, preached to the people. Sixty men en- 
listed and, in a few days, many more. On 13th 
March, at a general review of all the military 
companies, he preached to a very full assembly, 
taking for his text, 1 Chronicles xiii. 12, "And, 
behold, God himself is with us for our captain, 
and his priests with sounding trumpets to cry 
alarm against you." ^ It is said that all the 
services of that day made a deep impression on 
the people, even to the singing of the psalm. 

A large amount of military stores had been 
deposited in this town, by order of the Provin- 
cial Committee of Safety. It was to destroy 
those stores that the troops who were attacked 
in this town, on the 19th April, 1775, were sent 
hither by General Gage. 

The story of that day is well known. In 



AT CONCORD 73 

these peaceful fields, for the first time since a 
hundred years, the drum and alarm-gun were 
heard, and the farmers snatched down their 
rusty firelocks from the kitchen walls, to make 
good the resolute words of their town debates. 
In the field where the western abutment of the 
old bridge may still be seen, about half a mile 
from this spot, the first organized resistance was 
made to the British arms. There the Americans 
first shed British blood. Eight hundred British 
soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant- 
Colonel Francis Smith, had marched from Bos- 
ton to Concord ; at Lexington had fired upon 
the brave handful of militia, for which a speedy 
revenge was reaped by the same militia in the 
afternoon. When they entered Concord, they 
found the militia and minute-men assembled 
under the command of Colonel Barrett and 
Major Buttrick. This little battalion, though in 
their hasty council some were urgent to stand 
their ground, retreated before the enemy to the 
high land on the other bank of the river, to wait 
for reinforcement. Colonel Barrett ordered the 
troops not to fire, unless fired upon. The British 
following them across the bridge, posted two 
companies, amounting to about one hundred 
men, to guard the bridge, and secure the return 



74 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

of the plundering party. Meantime, the men of 
Acton, Bedford, Lincoln and Carlisle, all once 
included in Concord, remembering their parent 
town in the hour of danger, arrived and fell 
into the ranks so fast, that Major Buttrick 
found himself superior in number to the ene- 
my*s party at the bridge. And when the smoke 
began to rise from the village where the British 
were burning cannon-carriages and military 
stores, the Americans resolved to force their 
way into town. The English beginning to pluck 
up some of the planks of the bridge, the Ameri- 
cans quickened their pace, and the British fired 
one or two shots up the river (our ancient 
friend here, Master Blood," saw the water struck 
by the first ball) ; then a single gun, the ball 
from which wounded Luther Blanchard and 
Jonas Brown, and then a volley, by which Cap- 
tain Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer of Acton 
were instantly killed. Major Buttrick leaped 
from the ground, and gave the command to 
fire, which was repeated in a simultaneous cry 
by all his men. The Americans fired, and killed 
two men and wounded eight. A head-stone 
and a foot-stone, on this bank of the river, 
mark the place where these first victims lie.* 
The British retreated immediately towards the 



AT CONCORD 75 

village, and were joined by two companies of 
grenadiers, whom the noise of the firing had 
hastened to the spot. The militia and minute- 
men — every one from that moment being his 
own commander — ran over the hills opposite 
the battle-field, and across the great fields, into 
the east quarter of the town, to waylay the 
enemy, and annoy his retreat. The British, as 
soon as they were rejoined by the plundering 
detachment, began that disastrous retreat to 
Boston, which was an omen to both parties of 
the event of the war. 

In all the anecdotes of that day's events we 
may discern the natural action of the people. 
It was not an extravagant ebullition of feeling, 
but might have been calculated on by any one 
acquainted with the spirits and habits of our 
community. Those poor farmers who came up, 
that day, to defend their native soil, acted from 
the simplest instincts. They did not know it was 
a deed of fame they were doing. These men 
did not babble of glory. They never dreamed 
their children would contend who had done the 
most. They supposed they had a right to their 
corn and their cattle, without paying tribute 
to any but their own governors. And as they 
had no fear of man, they yet did have a fear of 



76 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

God. Captain Charles Miles, who was wounded 
in the pursuit of the enemy, told my venerable 
friend who sits by me, that " he went to the 
services of that day, with the same seriousness 
and acknowledgment of God, which he carried 
to church." ' 

The presence of these aged men who were in 
arms on that day seems to bring us nearer to it. 
The benignant Providence which has prolonged 
their lives to this hour gratifies the strong curi- 
osity of the new generation. The Pilgrims are 
gone ; but we see what manner of persons they 
were who stood in the worst perils of the Revo- 
lution. We hold by the hand the last of the 
invincible men of old, and confirm from living 
lips the sealed records of time. 

And you, my fathers, whom God and the 
history of your country have ennobled, may well 
bear a chief part in keeping this peaceful birth- 
day of our town. You are indeed extraordinary 
heroes. If ever men in arms had a spotless cause, 
you had. You have fought a good fight. And 
having quit you like men in the battle, you have 
quit yourselves like men in your virtuous fami- 
lies ; in your cornfields ; and in society. We will 
not hide your honorable gray hairs under per- 
ishing laurel-leaves, but the eye of afiFection and 



AT CONCORD 77 

veneration follows you. You are set apart — and 
forever — for the esteem and gratitude of the 
human race. To you belongs a better badge 
than stars and ribbons. This prospering country 
is your ornament, and this expanding nation is 
multiplying your praise with millions of tongues.^ 
The agitating events of those days were duly 
remembered in the church. On the second day 
after the affray, divine service was attended, in 
this house, by 700 soldiers. William Emerson, 
the pastor, had a hereditary claim to the affec- 
tion of the people, being descended in the fourth 
generation from Edward Bulkeley, son of Peter. 
But he had merits of his own. The cause of the 
Colonies was so much in his heart that he did 
not cease to make it the subject of his preaching 
and his prayers, and is said to have deeply in- 
spired many of his people with his own enthu- 
siasm. He, at least, saw clearly the pregnant 
consequences of the 19th April. I have found 
within a few days, among some family papers, ^ 
his almanac of 1775, ^^ ^ blank leaf of which he 
has written a narrative of the fight ; "^ and at 
the close of the month, he writes, " This month 
remarkable for the greatest events of the present 
age." To promote the same cause, he asked, 
and obtained of the town, leave to accept the 



78 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

commission of chaplain to the Northern army, 
at Ticonderoga, and died, after a few months, 
of the distemper that prevailed in the camp." 

In the whole course of the war the town did 
not depart from this pledge it had given. Its 
little population of 1300 souls behaved like a 
party to the contest. The number of its troops 
constantly in service is very great. Its pecuniary 
burdens are out of all proportion to its capital. 
The economy so rigid, which marked its earlier 
history, has all vanished. It spends profusely, 
affectionately, in the service. " Since," say the 
plaintive records, "General Washington, at Cam- 
bridge, is not able to give but 24s. per cord for 
wood, for the army ; it is Voted, that this town 
encourage the inhabitants to supply the army, 
by paying two dollars per cord, over and above 
the General's price, to such as shall carry wood 
thither ; " ^ and 210 cords of wood were carried. 
A similar order is taken respecting hay. Whilst 
Boston was occupied by the British troops. 
Concord contributed to the relief of the inhab- 
itants, ^70, in money; 225 bushels of grain; 
and a quantity of meat and wood. When, pre- 
sently, the poor of Boston were quartered by the 
Provincial Congress on the neighboring country. 
Concord received 82 persons to its hospitality. 



AT CONCORD 79 

In the year 1775, ^^ raised 100 minute-men, and 
74 soldiers to serve at Cambridge. In March, 
1776, 145 men were raised by this town to serve 
at Dorchester Heights." In June, the General 
Assembly of Massachusetts resolved to raise 
5000 militia for six months, to reinforce the 
Continental army. " The numbers," say they, 
" are large, but this Court has the fullest assur- 
ance that their brethren, on this occasion, will 
not confer with flesh and blood, but will, with- 
out hesitation, and with the utmost alacrity and 
despatch, fill up the numbers proportioned to 
the several towns." ^ On that occasion. Concord 
furnished 67 men, paying them itself, at an 
expense of ^^622. And so on, with every levy, 
to the end of the war. For these men it was 
continually providing shoes, stockings, shirts, 
coats, blankets and beef The taxes, which, be- 
fore the war, had not much exceeded £100 per 
annum, amounted, in the year 1782, to ^9544, 
in silver.^ 

The great expense of the war was borne with 
cheerfulness, whilst the war lasted ; but years 
passed, after the peace, before the debt was paid. 
As soon as danger and injury ceased, the people 
were left at leisure to consider their poverty and 
their debts. The Town Records show how slowly 



8o HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

the inhabitants recovered from the strain of 
excessive exertion. Their instructions to their 
representatives are full of loud complaints of the 
disgraceful state of public credit, and the excess 
of public expenditure. They may be pardoned, 
under such distress, for the mistakes of an ex- 
treme frugality. They fell into a common error, 
not yet dismissed to the moon, that the remedy 
was, to forbid the great importation of foreign 
commodities, and to prescribe by law the prices 
of articles. The operation of a new government 
was dreaded, lest it should prove expensive, and 
the country towns thought it would be cheaper 
if it were removed from the capital. They were 
jealous lest the General Court should pay itself 
too liberally, and our fathers must be forgiven 
by their charitable posterity, if, in 1782, before 
choosing a representative, it was " Voted, that 
the person who should be chosen representative 
to the General Court should receive 6s. per day, 
whilst in actual service, an account of which 
time he should bring to the town, and if it should 
be that the General Court should resolve, that, 
their pay should be more than 6s., then the 
representative shall be hereby directed to pay 
the overplus into the town treasury." ' This was 
securing the prudence of the public servants. 



AT CONCORD 8i 

But whilst the town had its own full share of 
the public distress, it was very far from desiring 
relief at the cost of order and law. In 1786, 
when the general sufferings drove the people in 
parts of Worcester and Hampshire counties to 
insurrection, a large party of armed insurgents 
arrived in this town, on the 12th September, to 
hinder the sitting of the Court of Common 
Pleas. But they found no countenance here.' 
The same people who had been active in a 
County Convention to consider grievances, con- 
demned the rebellion, and joined the authorities 
in putting it down."" In 1787, the admirable 
instructions given by the town to its represent- 
ative are a proud monument of the good sense 
and good feeling that prevailed. The grievances 
ceased with the adoption of the Federal Consti- 
tution. The constitution of Massachusetts had 
been already accepted. It was put to the town 
of Concord, in October, 1776, by the Legisla- 
ture, whether the existing house of represent- 
atives should enact a constitution for the State ? 
The town answered No.^ The General Court, 
notwithstanding, draughted a constitution, sent 
it here, and asked the town whether they would 
have it for the law of the State ? The town 
answered No, by a unanimous vote. In 1780, a 

XI 



82 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

constitution of the State, proposed by the Con- 
vention chosen for that purpose, was accepted 
by the town with the reservation of some arti- 
cles.' And, in 1788, the town, by its delegate, 
accepted the new Constitution of the United 
States, and this event closed the whole series 
of important public events in which this town 
played a part. 

From that time to the present hour, this town 
has made a slow but constant progress in popu- 
lation and wealth, and the arts of peace. It has 
suffered neither from war, nor pestilence, nor 
famine, nor flagrant crime. Its population, in 
the census of 1830, was 2020 souls. The pub- 
lic expenses, for the last year, amounted to 
I4290 ; for the present year, to ^5040.^ If the 
community stints its expense in small matters, it 
spends freely on great duties. The town raises, 
this year, $1800 for its public schools; besides 
about 1 1 200 which are paid, by subscription, 
for private schools. This year, it expends ^800 
for its poor ; the last year it expended ^900. 
Two religious societies, of differing creed, dwell 
together in good understanding, both promot- 
ing, we hope, the cause of righteousness and 
love.^ Concord has always been noted for its 
ministers. The living need no praise of mine. 



AT CONCORD 83 

Yet it Is among the sources of satisfaction and 
gratitude, this day, that the aged with whom 
is wisdom, our fathers' counsellor and friend, is 
spared to counsel and intercede for the sons.' 

Such, fellow citizens, is an imperfect sketch 
of the history of Concord. I have been greatly 
indebted, in preparing this sketch, to the printed 
but unpublished History of this town, furnished 
me by the unhesitating kindness of its author, 
long a resident in this place. I hope that His- 
tory will not long remain unknown. The author 
has done us and posterity a kindness, by the 
zeal and patience of his research, and has wisely 
enriched his pages with the resolutions, ad- 
dresses and instructions to its agents, which from 
time to time, at critical periods, the town has 
voted.'' Meantime, I have read with care the 
Town Records themselves. They must ever be 
the fountains of all just information respecting 
your character and customs. They are the his- 
tory of the town. They exhibit a pleasing picture 
of a community almost exclusively agricultural, 
where no man has much time for words, in his 
search after things ; of a community of great sim- 
plicity of manners, and of a manifest love of jus- 
tice. For the most part, the town has deserved 
the name it wears. I find our annals marked 



84 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

with a uniform good sense. I find no ridiculous 
laws, no eavesdropping legislators, no hanging 
of witches, no ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, 
no unnatural crimes. The tone of the Records 
rises with the dignity of the event. These soiled 
and musty books are luminous and electric 
within. The old town clerks did not spell very 
correctly, but they contrive to make pretty in- 
telligible the will of a free and just community. 
Frugal our fathers were, — very frugal, — though, 
for the most part, they deal generously by their 
minister, and provide well for the schools and 
the poor. If, at any time, in common with most 
of our towns, they have carried this economy to 
the verge of a vice, it is to be remembered that 
a town is, in many respects, a financial corpora- 
tion. They economize, that they may sacrifice. 
They stint and higgle on the price of a pew^, that 
they may send 200 soldiers to General Washing- 
ton to keep Great Britain at bay. For splendor, 
there must somewhere be rigid economy. That 
the head of the house may go brave, the mem- 
bers must be plainly clad, and the town must 
save that the State may spend. Of late years, 
the growth of Concord has been slow. Without 
navigable waters, without mineral riches, without 
any considerable mill privileges, the natural in- 



AT CONCORD 85 

crease of her population is drained by the con- 
stant emigration of the youth. Her sons have 
settled the region around us, and far from us. 
Their wagons have rattled down the remote 
western hills. And in every part of this coun- 
try, and in many foreign parts, they plough the 
earth, they traverse the sea, they engage in trade 
and in all the professions.' 

Fellow citizens ; let not the solemn shadows 
of two hundred years, this day, fall over us in 
vain. I feel some unwillingness to quit the re- 
membrance of the past. With all the hope of 
the new I feel that we are leaving the old. Every 
moment carries us farther from the two great 
epochs of public principle, the Planting, and the 
Revolution of the colony. Fortunate and fa- 
vored this town has been, in having received so 
large an infusion of the spirit of both of those 
periods. Humble as is our village in the circle 
of later and prouder towns that whiten the land, 
it has been consecrated by the presence and 
activity of the purest men. Why need 1 remind 
you of our own Hosmers, Minotts, Cumings, 
Barretts, Beattons, the departed benefactors of 
the town ? On the village green have been the 
steps of Winthrop and Dudley; of John Eliot, 
the Indian apostle, who had a courage that in- 



86 HISTORICAL DISCOURSE 

timidated those savages whom his love could 
not melt ; of Whitfield, whose silver voice melted 
his great congregation into tears ; of Hancock, 
and his compatriots of the Provincial Congress ; 
of Langdon, and the college over which he pre- 
sided. But even more sacred influences than 
these have mingled here with the stream of 
human life. The merit of those who fill a space 
in the world's history, who are borne forward, 
as it were, by the weight of thousands whom 
they lead, sheds a perfume less sweet than do the 
sacrifices of private virtue. I have had much 
opportunity of access to anecdotes of families, 
and I believe this town to have been the dwell- 
ing-place, in all times since its planting, of 
pious and excellent persons, who walked meekly 
through the paths of common life, who served 
God, and loved man, and never let go the 
hope of immortality. The benediction of their 
prayers and of their principles lingers around us. 
The acknowledgment of the Supreme Being 
exalts the history of this people. It brought the 
fathers hither. In a war of principle, it deliv- 
ered their sons. And so long as a spark of this 
faith survives among the children's children so 
long shall the name of Concord be honest and 
venerable. 



Ill 

LETTER 

TO MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT OF THE 
UNITED STATES 

A PROTEST AGAINST THE REMOVAL OF THE 

CHEROKEE INDIANS FROM THE 

STATE OF GEORGIA 



"Say, what is Honour ? 'Tis the finest sense 
Of justice which the human mind can frame. 
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim. 
And guard the way of life from all offence. 
Suffered or done.*' 

Wordsworth, 



LETTER 

TO MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT 
OF THE UNITED STATES 

Concord, Mass., April 23, 1838. 

SIR: The seat you fill places you in a rela- 
tion of credit and nearness to every citizen. 
By right and natural position, every citizen is 
your friend. Before any acts contrary to his own 
judgment or interest have repelled the affections 
of any man, each may look with trust and living 
anticipation to your government. Each has the 
highest right to call your attention to such 
subjects as are of a public nature, and properly 
belong to the chief magistrate ; and the good 
magistrate will feel a joy in meeting such con- 
fidence. In this belief and at the instance of 
a few of my friends and neighbors, I crave of 
your patience a short hearing for their senti- 
ments and my own : and the circumstance that 
my name will be utterly unknown to you will 
only give the fairer chance to your equitable 
construction of what I have to say. 

Sir, my communication respects the sinister 
rumors that fill this part of the country con- 
cerning the Cherokee people. The interest 



90 LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 

always felt in the aboriginal population — an 
interest naturally growing as that decays — has 
been heightened in regard to this tribe. Even 
in our distant State some good rumor of their 
worth and civility has arrived. We have learned 
with joy their improvement in the social arts. 
We have read their newspapers. We have seen 
some of them in our schools and colleges. In 
common with the great body of the American 
people, we have witnessed with sympathy the 
painful labors of these red men to redeem their 
own race from the doom of eternal inferiority, 
and to borrow and domesticate in the tribe the 
arts and customs of the Caucasian race. And 
notwithstanding the unaccountable apathy with 
which of late years the Indians have been some- 
times abandoned to their enemies, it is not to 
be doubted that it is the good pleasure and the 
understanding of all humane persons in the 
Republic, of the men and the matrons sitting 
in the thriving independent families all over the 
land, that they shall be duly cared for; that 
they shall taste justice and love from all to 
whom we have delegated the office of dealing 
with them. 

The newspapers now inform us that, in 
December, 1835, ^ treaty contracting for the 



LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 91 

exchange of all the Cherokee territory was pre- 
tended to be made by an agent on the part of 
the United States with some persons appearing 
on the part of the Cherokees ; that the fact 
afterwards transpired that these deputies did by 
no means represent the will of the nation ; and 
that, out of eighteen thousand souls composing 
the nation, fifteen thousand six hundred and 
sixty-eight have protested against the so-called 
treaty. It now appears that the government 
of the United States choose to hold the Chero- 
kees to this sham treaty, and are proceeding to 
execute the same. Almost the entire Cherokee 
Nation stand up and say, " This is not our act. 
Behold us. Here are we. Do not mistake that 
handful of deserters for us ; " and the American 
President and the Cabinet, the Senate and the 
House of Representatives, neither hear these 
men nor see them, and are contracting to put 
this active nation into carts and boats, and to 
drag them over mountains and rivers to a wil- 
derness at a vast distance beyond the Missis- 
sippi. And a paper purporting to be an army 
order fixes a month from this day as the hour 
for this doleful removal. 

In the name of God, sir, we ask you if this 
be so. Do the newspapers rightly inform us ? 



92 LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 

Men and women with pale and perplexed faces 
meet one another in the streets and churches 
here, and ask if this be so. We have inquired 
if this be a gross misrepresentation from the 
party opposed to the government and anxious 
to blacken it with the people. We have looked 
in the newspapers of different parties and find 
a horrid confirmation of the tale. We are slow 
to believe it. We hoped the Indians were mis- 
informed, and that their remonstrance was pre- 
mature, and will turn out to be a needless act 
of terror. 

The piety, the principle that is left in the 
United States, if only in its coarsest form, a re- 
gard to the speech of men, — forbid us to enter- 
tain it as a fact. Such a dereliction of all faith 
and virtue, such a denial of justice, and such 
deafness to screams for mercy were never heard 
of in times of peace and in the dealing of a na- 
tion with its own allies and wards, since the earth 
was made. Sir, does this government think that 
the people of the United States are become 
savage and mad ^ From their mind are the sen- 
timents of love and a good nature wiped clean 
out ? The soul of man, the justice, the mercy 
that is the heart's heart in all men, from Maine 
to Georgia, does abhor this business. 



LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 93 

In speaking thus the sentiments of my neigh- 
bors and my own, perhaps I overstep the bounds 
of decorum. But would it not be a higher inde- 
corum coldly to argue a matter like this ? We 
only state the fact that a crime is projected that 
confounds our understandings by its magnitude, 
— a crime that really deprives us as well as the 
Cherokees of a country ? for how could we call 
the conspiracy that should crush these poor 
Indians our government, or the land that was 
cursed by their parting and dying imprecations 
our country, any more ? You, sir, will bring 
down that renowned chair in which you sit into 
infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of 
perfidy ; and the name of this nation, hitherto 
the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink 
to the world. 

You will not do us the injustice of connecting 
this remonstrance with any sectional and party 
feeling. It is in our hearts the simplest com- 
mandment of brotherly love. We will not have 
this great and solemn claim upon national and 
human justice huddled aside under the flimsy 
plea of its being a party act. Sir, to us the 
questions upon which the government and the 
people have been agitated during the past year, 
touching the prostration of the currency and of 



94 LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 

trade, seem but motes in comparison. These 
hard times, it is true, have brought the dis- 
cussion home to every farmhouse and poor 
man*s house in this town ; but it is the chirping 
of grasshoppers beside the immortal question 
whether justice shall be done by the race of 
civilized to the race of savage man, — whether ail 
the attributes of reason, of civility, of justice, 
and even of mercy, shall be put off by the 
American people, and so vast an outrage upon 
the Cherokee Nation and upon human nature 
shall be consummated. 

One circumstance lessens the reluctance with 
which I intrude at this time on your attention 
my conviction that the government ought to be 
admonished of a new historical fact, which the 
discussion of this question has disclosed, namely, 
that there exists in a great part of the Northern 
people a gloomy diffidence in the moral charac- 
ter of the government. 

On the broaching of this question, a general 
expression of despondency, of disbelief that any 
good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act 
of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to 
whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. 
Will the American government steal? Will it 
lie? Will it kill? — We ask triumphantly. Our 



LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 95 

counsellors and old statesmen here say that ten 
years ago they would have staked their lives on 
the affirmation that the proposed Indian mea- 
sures could not be executed ; that the unanimous 
country would put them down. And now the 
steps of this crime follow each other so fast, at 
such fatally quick time, that the millions of virtu- 
ous citizens, whose agents the government are, 
have no place to interpose, and must shut their 
eyes until the last howl and wailing of these 
tormented villages and tribes shall afflict the ear 
of the world. 

I will not hide from you, as an indication of 
the alarming distrust, that a letter addressed as 
mine is, and suggesting to the mind of the 
Executive the plain obligations of man, has a 
burlesque character in the apprehensions of some 
of my friends. I, sir, will not beforehand treat 
you with the contumely of this distrust. I will 
at least state to you this fact, and show you how 
plain and humane people, whose love would 
be honor, regard the policy of the government, 
and what injurious inferences they draw as to 
the minds of the governors. A man with your 
experience in aifairs must have seen cause to 
appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral 
sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and 



96 LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 

however great the oppressor, it is in the nature 
of things that the blow should recoil upon the 
aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and 
it cannot be withstood. The potentate and the 
people perish before it ; but with it, and as its 
executor, they are omnipotent. 

I write thus, sir, to inform you of the state 
of mind these Indian tidings have awakened 
here, and to pray with one voice more that you, 
whose hands are strong with the delegated power 
of fifteen millions of men, will avert with that 
might the terrific injury which threatens the 
Cherokee tribe. 

With great respect, sir, I am your fellow 
citizen, 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 



IV 
ADDRESS 

DELIVERED IN CONCORD ON THE ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE EMANCIPATION OF THE NEGROES 

IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES, 

AUGUST 1, 1844. 



There a captive sat in chains. 
Crooning ditties treasured well 
From his Afric's torrid plains. 
Sole estate his sire bequeathed, — 
Hapless sire to hapless son, — 
Was the wailing song he breathed. 
And his chain when life was done. 



ADDRESS 

EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH 
WEST INDIES 

FRIENDS AND Fellow Citizens: We are 
met to exchange congratulations on the 
anniversary of an event singular in the history 
of civilization ; a day of reason ; of the clear 
light; of that which makes us better than a 
flock of birds and beasts ; a day which gave the 
immense fortification of a fact, of gross history, 
to ethical abstractions. It was the settlement, as 
far as a great Empire was concerned, of a ques- 
tion on which almost every leading citizen in it 
had taken care to record his vote ; one which 
for many years absorbed the attention of the 
best and most eminent of mankind. I might 
well hesitate, coming from other studies, and 
without the smallest claim to be a special laborer 
in this work of humanity, to undertake to set 
this matter before you ; which ought rather to 
be done by a strict cooperation of many well- 
advised persons ; but I shall not apologize for 
my weakness. In this cause, no man's weakness 
is any prejudice : it has a thousand sons ; if one 

.. Of G. 



100 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

man cannot speak, ten others can ; and, whether 
by the wisdom of its friends, or by the folly of 
the adversaries ; by speech and by silence ; by 
doing and by omitting to do, it goes forward. 
Therefore I will speak, — or, not I, but the 
might of liberty in my weakness. The subject 
is said to have the property of making dull men 
eloquent. 

It has been in all men's experience a marked 
effect of the enterprise in behalf of the African, 
to generate an overbearing and defying spirit. 
The institution of slavery seems to its opponent 
to have but one side, and he feels that none but 
a stupid or a malignant person can hesitate on a 
view of the facts. Under such an impulse, I was 
about to say. If any cannot speak, or cannot 
hear the words of freedom, let him go hence, — 
I had almost said. Creep into your grave, the 
universe has no need of you ! But I have thought 
better : let him not go. When we consider what 
remains to be done for this interest in this coun- 
try, the dictates of humanity make us tender of 
such as are not yet persuaded.' The hardest 
selfishness is to be borne with. Let us withhold 
every reproachful, and, if we can, every indignant 
remark. In this cause, we must renounce our 
temper, and the risings of pride. If there be any 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION loi 

man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a 
small matter, compared with the last decoration 
and completions of his own comfort, — who 
would not so much as part with his ice-cream, 
to save them from rapine and manacles, I think 
I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also 
his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by- 
placing the negro nation on a fair footing than 
by robbing them. If the Virginian piques him- 
self on the picturesque luxury of his vassalage, 
on the heavy Ethiopian manners of his house- 
servants, their silent obedience, their hue of 
bronze, their turbaned heads, and would not 
exchange them for the more intelligent but 
precarious hired service of whites, I shall not 
refuse to show him that when their free-papers 
are made out, it will still be their interest to 
remain on his estate, and that the oldest planters 
of Jamaica are convinced that it is cheaper to 
pay wages than to own the slave. 

The history of mankind interests us only as it 
exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the 
incessant conflict which it records between the 
material and the moral nature. From the earliest 
monuments it appears that one race was victim 
and served the other races. In the oldest tem- 
ples of Egypt, negro captives are painted on the 



102 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

tombs of kings, In such attitudes as to show that 
they are on the point of being executed ; and 
Herodotus, our oldest historian, relates that 
the Troglodytes hunted the Ethiopians in four- 
horse chariots. From the earliest time, the negro 
has been an article of luxury to the commercial 
nations. So has it been, down to the day that has 
just dawned on the world. Language must be 
raked, the secrets of slaughter-houses and infa- 
mous holes that cannot front the day, must be 
ransacked, to tell what negro slavery has been. 
These men, our benefactors, as they are pro- 
ducers of corn and wine, of coffee, of tobacco, of 
cotton, of sugar, of rum and brandy ; gentle and 
joyous themselves, and producers of comfort and 
luxury for the civilized world, — there seated in 
the finest climates of the globe, children of the 
sun, — I am heart-sick when I read how they 
came there, and how they are kept there. Their 
case was left out of the mind and out of the heart 
of their brothers. The prizes of society, the 
trumpet of fame, the privileges of learning, of 
culture, of religion, the decencies and joys of 
marriage, honor, obedience, personal authority 
and a perpetual melioration into a finer civility, 
— these were for all, but not for them. For the 
negro, was the slave-ship to begin with, in whose 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 103 

filthy hold he sat in irons, unable to lie down ; 
bad food, and insufficiency of that; disfranchise- 
ment ; no property in the rags that covered him; 
no marriage, no right in the poor black woman 
that cherished him in her bosom, no right to 
the children of his body ; no security from the 
humors, none from the crimes, none from the 
appetites of his master : toil, famine, insult and 
flogging ; and, when he sank in the furrow, no 
wind of good fame blew over him, no priest of 
salvation visited him with glad tidings : but 
he went down to death with dusky dreams of 
African shadow-catchers and Obeahs hunting 
him.' Very sad was the negro tradition, that the 
Great Spirit, in the beginning offered the black 
man, whom he loved better than the buckra, or 
white, his choice of two boxes, a big and a little 
one. The black man was greedy, and chose the 
largest. " The buckra box was full up with 
pen, paper and whip, and the negro box with 
hoe and bill; and hoe and bill for negro to this 
day." 

But the crude element of good in human 
affairs must work and ripen, spite of whips and 
plantation laws and West Indian interest. Con- 
science rolled on its pillow, and could not sleep. 
We sympathize very tenderly here with the poor 



104 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

aggrieved planter, of whom so many unpleasant 
things are said ; but if we saw the whip applied 
to old men, to tender women ; and, undeniably, 
though I shrink to say so, pregnant women set 
in the treadmill for refusing to work ; when, not 
they, but the eternal law of animal nature re- 
fused to work ; — if we saw men's backs flayed 
with cowhides, and " hot rum poured on, super- 
induced with brine or pickle, rubbed in with a 
cornhusk, in the scorching heat of the sun;" — 
if we saw the runaways hunted with bloodhounds 
into swamps and hills ; and, in cases of passion, 
a planter throwing his negro into a copper of 
boiling cane-juice, — if we saw these things with 
eyes, we too should wince. They are not plea- 
sant sights. The blood is moral : the blood is 
anti-slavery : it runs cold in the veins : the stom- 
ach rises with disgust, and curses slavery. Well, 
so it happened ; a good man or woman, a coun- 
try boy or girl, — it would so fall out, — once 
in a while saw these injuries and had the indis- 
cretion to tell of them. The horrid story ran 
and flew ; the winds blew it all over the world. 
They who heard it asked their rich and great 
friends if it was true, or only missionary lies. 
The richest and greatest, the prime minister of 
England, the king's privy council were obliged 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 105 

to say that It was too true. It became plain to 
all men, the more this business was looked into, 
that the crimes and cruelties of the slave-traders 
and slave-owners could not be overstated. The 
more it was searched, the more shocking anec- 
dotes came up, — things not to be spoken. Hu- 
mane persons who were informed of the reports 
insisted on proving them. Granville Sharpe was 
accidentally made acquainted with the sufferings 
of a slave, whom a West Indian planter had 
brought with him to London and had beaten 
with a pistol on his head, so badly that his whole 
body became diseased, and the man useless to 
his master, who left him to go whither he pleased. 
The man applied to Mr. William Sharpe, a chari- 
table surgeon, who attended the diseases of the 
poor. In process of time, he was healed. Gran- 
ville Sharpe found him at his brother's and pro- 
cured a place for him in an apothecary's shop. 
The master accidentally met his recovered slave, 
and instantly endeavored to get possession of 
him again. Sharpe protected the slave. In con- 
sulting with the lawyers, they told Sharpe the 
laws were against him. Sharpe would not believe 
it ; no prescription on earth could ever render 
such iniquities legal. ' But the decisions are 
against you, and Lord Mansfield, now Chief 



io6 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

Justice of England, leans to the decisions/ 
Sharpe instantly sat down and gave himself to 
the study of English law for more than two 
years, until he had proved that the opinions re- 
lied on, of Talbot and Yorke, were incompatible 
with the former English decisions and with the 
whole spirit of English law. He published his 
book in 1769, and he so filled the heads and 
hearts of his advocates that when he brought the 
case of George Somerset, another slave, before 
Lord Mansfield, the slavish decisions were set 
aside, and equity affirmed.' There is a sparkle 
of God's righteousness in Lord Mansfield's 
judgment, which does the heart good. Very 
unwilling had that great lawyer been to reverse 
the late decisions ; he suggested twice from the 
bench, in the course of the trial, how the ques- 
tion might be got rid of: but the hint was not 
taken ; the case was adjourned again and again, 
and judgment delayed. At last judgment was 
demanded, and on the 126. June, 1772, Lord 
Mansfield is reported to have decided in these 
words : 

" Immemorial usage preserves the memory of 
positive laWy long after all traces of the occasion, 
reason, authority and time of its introduction, 
are lost ; and in a case so odious as the condition 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 107 

of slaves, must be taken strictly (tracing the 
subject to natural principles J the claim of slavery 
never can be supported). The power claimed by 
this return never was in use here. We cannot 
say the cause set forth by this return is allowed 
or approved of by the laws of this kingdom; 
and therefore the man must be discharged." 

This decision established the principle that 
the " air of England is too pure for any slave to 
breathe," but the wrongs in the islands were not 
thereby touched. Public attention, however, was 
drawn that way, and the methods of the stealing 
and the transportation from Africa became noised 
abroad. The Quakers got the story. In their 
plain meeting-houses and prim dwellings this 
dismal agitation got entrance. They were rich : 
they owned, for debt or by inheritance, island 
property ; they were religious, tender-hearted 
men and women ; and they had to hear the news 
and digest it as they could. Six Quakers met 
in London on the 6th of July, 1783, — Wil- 
liam Dillwyn, Samuel Hoar, George Harrison, 
Thomas Knowles, John Lloyd, Joseph Woods, 
" to consider what step they should take for 
the relief and liberation of the negro slaves in the 
West Indies, and for the discouragement of the 
slave-trade on the coast of Africa." They made 



io8 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

friends and raised money for the slave ; they 
interested their Yearly Meeting ; and all Eng- 
lish and all American Quakers. John Woolman 
of New Jersey, whilst yet an apprentice, was 
uneasy in his mind when he was set to write a 
bill of sale of a negro, for his master. He gave 
his testimony against the traffic, in Maryland 
and Virginia. Thomas Clarkson was a youth 
at Cambridge, England, when the subject given 
out for a Latin prize dissertation was, " Is it 
right to make slaves of others against their will ? " 
He wrote an essay, and won the prize ; but he 
wrote too well for his own peace ; he began to 
ask himself if these things could be true ; and 
if they were, he could no longer rest. He left 
Cambridge ; he fell in with the six Quakers. 
They engaged him to act for them. He himself 
interested Mr. Wilberforce in the matter. The 
shipmasters in that trade were the greatest mis- 
creants, and guilty of every barbarity to their own 
crews. Clarkson went to Bristol, made himself 
acquainted with the interior of the slave-ships 
and the details of the trade. The facts confirmed 
his sentiment, " that Providence had never made 
that to be wise which was immoral, and that the 
slave-trade was as impolitic as it was unjust; " ^ 
that it was found peculiarly fatal to those 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 109 

employed in it. More seamen died in that trade 
in one year than in the whole remaining trade of 
the country in two. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox were 
drawn into the generous enterprise. In 1788, 
the House of Commons voted Parliamentary 
inquiry. In 1791, a bill to abolish the trade was 
brought in by Wilberforce, and supported by 
him and by Fox and Burke and Pitt, with the 
utmost ability and faithfulness ; resisted by the 
planters and the whole West Indian interest, and 
lost. During the next sixteen years, ten times, 
year after year, the attempt was renewed by Mr. 
Wilberforce, and ten times defeated by the 
planters. The king, and all the royal family but 
one, were against it. These debates are instruct- 
ive, as they show on what grounds the trade was 
assailed and defended. Everything generous, 
wise and sprightly is sure to come to the attack. 
On the other part are found cold prudence, bare- 
faced selfishness and silent votes. But the nation 
was aroused to enthusiasm. Every horrid fact 
became known. In 1791, three hundred thou- 
sand persons in Britain pledged themselves to 
abstain from all articles of island produce. The 
planters were obliged to give way ; and in 1807, 
on the 25th March, the bill passed, and the 
slave-trade was abolished. 



no WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

The assailants of slavery had early agreed to 
limit their political action on this subject to the 
abolition of the trade, but Granville Sharpe, as a 
matter of conscience, whilst he acted as chairman 
of the London Committee, felt constrained to 
record his protest against the limitation, declar- 
ing that slavery was as much a crime against 
the Divine law as the slave-trade. The trade, 
under false flags, went on as before. In 1821, 
according to official documents presented to the 
American government by the Colonization So- 
ciety, 200,000 slaves were deported from Africa. 
Nearly 30,000 were landed in the port of Ha- 
vana alone. In consequence of the dangers of 
the trade growing out of the act of abolition, 
ships were built sharp for swiftness, and with a 
frightful disregard of the comfort of the victims 
they were destined to transport. They carried 
five, six, even seven hundred stowed in a ship 
built so narrow as to be unsafe, being made just 
broad enough on the beam to keep the sea. In 
attempting to make its escape from the pursuit 
of a man-of-war, one ship flung ^yq hundred 
slaves alive into the sea. These facts went into 
Parliament. In the islands was an ominous state 
of cruel and licentious society ; every house had 
a dungeon attached to it; every slave was worked 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION iii 

by the whip. There is no end to the tragic anec- 
dotes in the municipal records of the colonies. 
The boy was set to strip and flog his own 
mother to blood, for a small offence. Looking 
in the face of his master by the negro was held 
to be violence by the island courts. He was 
worked sixteen hours, and his ration by law, in 
some islands, was a pint of flour and one salt 
herring a day. He suffered insult, stripes, muti- 
lation at the humor of the master : iron collars 
were riveted on their necks with iron prongs ten 
inches long ; capsicum pepper was rubbed in 
the eyes of the females ; and they were done to 
death with the most shocking levity between the 
master and manager, without fine or inquiry. 
And when, at last, some Quakers, Moravians, 
and Wesleyan and Baptist missionaries, follow- 
ing in the steps of Carey and Ward in the East 
Indies, had been moved to come and cheer the 
poor victim with the hope of some reparation, 
in a future world, of the wrongs he suffered in 
this, these missionaries were persecuted by the 
planters, their lives threatened, their chapels 
burned, and the negroes furiously forbidden to 
go near them. These outrages rekindled the 
flame of British indignation. Petitions poured 
into Parliament : a million persons signed their 



112 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

names to these ; and in 1833, on the 14th May, 
Lord Stanley, Minister of the Colonies, intro- 
duced into the House of Commons his bill for 
the Emancipation. 

The scheme of the Minister, with such modi- 
fication as it received in the legislature, proposed 
gradual emancipation ; that on ist August, 1 834, 
all persons now slaves should be entitled to be 
registered as apprenticed laborers, and to acquire 
thereby all the rights and privileges of freemen, 
subject to the restriction of laboring under cer- 
tain conditions. These conditions were, that the 
praedials should owe three fourths of the profits 
of their labor to their masters for six years, and 
the non-praedials for four years." The other 
fourth of the apprentice's time was to be his 
own, which he might sell to his master, or to 
other persons ; and at the end of the term of 
years fixed, he should be free. 

With these provisions and conditions, the bill 
proceeds, in the twelfth section, in the following 
terms : " Be it enacted, that all and every per- 
son who, on the first August, 1834, shall be 
holden in slavery within any such British colony 
as aforesaid, shall upon and from and after the 
said first August, become and be to all intents 
and purposes free, and discharged of and from 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 113 

all manner of slavery, and shall be absolutely and 
forever manumitted ; and that the children there- 
after born to any such persons, and the offspring 
of such children, shall, in like manner, be free, 
from their birth ; and that from and after the 
first August, 1834, slavery shall be and is hereby 
utterly and forever abolished and declared un- 
lawful throughout the British colonies, planta- 
tions, and possessions abroad." 

The Ministers, having estimated the slave 
products of the colonies in annual exports of 
sugar, rum and coffee, at ^^ 1,500,000 per annum, 
estimated the total value of the slave property 
at 30,000,000 pounds sterling, and proposed to 
give the planters, as a compensation for so much 
of the slaves* time as the act took from them, 
20,000,000 pounds sterling, to be divided into 
nineteen shares for the nineteen colonies, and to 
be distributed to the owners of slaves by com- 
missioners, whose appointment and duties were 
regulated by the Act. After much debate, the 
bill passed by large majorities. The apprentice- 
ship system is understood to have proceeded 
from Lord Brougham, and was by him urged on 
his colleagues, who, it is said, were inclined to 
the policy of immediate emancipation. 

The colonial legislatures received the act of 



XI 



114 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

Parliament with various degrees of displeasure, 
and, of course, every provision of the bill was 
criticised with severity. The new relation be- 
tween the master and the apprentice, it was 
feared, would be mischievous ; for the bill re- 
quired the appointment of magistrates who 
should hear every complaint of the apprentice 
and see that justice was done him. It was feared 
that the interest of the master and servant would 
now produce perpetual discord between them. 
In the island of Antigua, containing 37,000 
people, 30,000 being negroes, these objections 
had such weight that the legislature rejected the 
apprenticeship system, and adopted absolute 
emancipation. In the other islands the system 
of the Ministry was accepted. 

The reception of it by the negro population 
was equal in nobleness to the deed. The negroes 
were called together by the missionaries and by 
the planters, and the news explained to them. 
On the night of the 31st July, they met every- 
where at their churches and chapels, and at 
midnight, when the clock struck twelve, on their 
knees, the silent, weeping assembly became 
men ; they rose and embraced each other ; they 
cried, they sung, they prayed, they were wild 
with joy, but there was no riot, no feasting. I 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 115 

have never read anything in history more touch- 
ing than the moderation of the negroes. Some 
American captains left the shore and put to sea, 
anticipating insurrection and general murder. 
With far different thoughts, the negroes spent 
the hour in their huts and chapels. I will not 
repeat to you the well-known paragraph, in 
which Messrs. Thome and Kimball, the com- 
missioners sent out in the year 1837 by the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, describe the oc- 
currences of that night in the island of Antigua. 
It has been quoted in every newspaper, and 
Dr. Channing has given it additional fame. But 
I must be indulged in quoting a few sentences 
from the pages that follow it, narrating the 
behavior of the emancipated people on the next 
day.' 

"The first of August came on Friday, and 
a release was proclaimed from all work until the 
next Monday. The day was chiefly spent by 
the great mass of the negroes in the churches and 
chapels. The clergy and missionaries through- 
out the island were actively engaged, seizing the 
opportunity to enlighten the people on all the 
duties and responsibilities of their new relation, 
and urging them to the attainment of that higher 
liberty with which Christ maketh his children 



ii6 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

free. In every quarter, we were assured, the day 
was like a Sabbath. Work had ceased. The 
hum of business was still : tranquillity pervaded 
the towns and country. The planters informed 
us that they went to the chapels where their 
own people were assembled, greeted them, shook 
hands with them, and exchanged the most hearty 
good wishes. At Grace Hill, there were at least 
a thousand persons around the Moravian Chapel 
who could not get in. For once the house of 
God suffered violence, and the violent took it 
by force. At Grace Bay, the people, all dressed 
in white, formed a procession, and walked arm 
in arm into the chapel. We were told that the 
dress of the negroes on that occasion was un- 
commonly simple and modest. There was not 
the least disposition to gayety. Throughout the 
island, there was not a single dance known of, 
either day or night, nor so much as a fiddle 
played." 

On the next Monday morning, with very few 
exceptions, every negro on every plantation was 
in the field at his work. In some places, they 
waited to see their master, to know what bargain 
he would make ; but for the most part, through- 
out the islands, nothing painful occurred. In 
June, 1835, ^^^ Ministers, Lord Aberdeen and 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 117 

Sir George Grey, declared to the Parliament that 
the system worked well ; that now for ten months, 
from 1st August, 1834, no injury or violence 
had been offered to any white, and only one 
black had been hurt in 800,000 negroes : and, 
contrary to many sinister predictions, that the 
new crop of island produce would not fall short 
of that of the last year. 

But the habit of oppression was not destroyed 
by a law and a day of jubilee. It soon appeared 
in all the islands that the planters were disposed 
to use their old privileges, and overwork the 
apprentices ; to take from them, under various 
pretences, their fourth part of their time; and 
to exert the same licentious despotism as before. 
The negroes complained to the magistrates and 
to the governor. In the island of Jamaica, this 
ill blood continually grew worse. The govern- 
ors. Lord Belmore, the Earl of Sligo, and after- 
wards Sir Lionel Smith (a governor of their own 
class, who had been sent out to gratify the 
planters), threw themselves on the side of the 
oppressed, and were at constant quarrel with the 
angry and bilious island legislature. Nothing 
can exceed the ill humor and sulkiness of the 
addresses of this assembly. 

I may here express a general remark, which 



ii8 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

the history of slavery seems to justify, that it is 
not founded solely on the avarice of the planter. 
We sometimes say, the planter does not want 
slaves, he only wants the immunities and the 
luxuries which the slaves yield him ; give him 
money, give him a machine that will yield him 
as much money as the slaves, and he will thank- 
fully let them go. He has no love of slavery, 
he wants luxury, and he will pay even this price 
of crime and danger for it. But I think expe- 
rience does not warrant this favorable distinction, 
but shows the existence, beside the covetousness, 
of a bitterer element, the love of power, the 
voluptuousness of holding a human being in his 
absolute control. We sometimes observe that 
spoiled children contract a habit of annoying 
quite wantonly those who have charge of them, 
and seem to measure their own sense of well- 
being, not by what they do, but by the degree 
of reaction they can cause. It is vain to get rid 
of them by not minding them : if purring and 
humming is not noticed, they squeal and screech ; 
then if you chide and console them, they find 
the experiment succeeds, and they begin again. 
The child will sit in your arms contented, pro- 
vided you do nothing. If you take a book and 
read, he commences hostile operations. The 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 119 

planter is the spoiled child of his unnatural 
habits, and has contracted in his indolent and 
luxurious climate the need of excitement by irri- 
tating and tormenting his slave. 

Sir Lionel Smith defended the poor negro 
girls, prey to the licentiousness of the planters ; 
they shall not be whipped with tamarind rods 
if they do not comply with their master's will; 
he defended the negro women; they should not 
be made to dig the cane-holes (which is the very 
hardest of the field work); he defended the 
Baptist preachers and the stipendiary magistrates, 
who are the negroes' friends, from the power of 
the planter. The power of the planters, however, 
to oppress, was greater than the power of the 
apprentice and of his guardians to withstand. 
Lord Brougham and Mr. Buxton declared that 
the planter had not fulfilled his part in the 
contract, whilst the apprentices had fulfilled 
theirs; and demanded that the emancipation 
should be hastened, and the apprenticeship abol- 
ished. Parliament was compelled to pass addi- 
tional laws for the defence and security of the 
negro, and in ill humor at these acts, the great 
island of Jamaica, with a population of half a 
million, and 300,000 negroes, early in 1838, 
resolved to throw up the two remaining years of 



120 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

apprenticeship, and to emancipate absolutely 
on the 1st August, 1838. In British Guiana, in 
Dominica, the same resolution had been earlier 
taken with more good will ; and the other islands 
fell into the measure ; so that on the ist August, 
1838, the shackles dropped from every British 
slave. The accounts which we have from all 
parties, both from the planters (and those too 
who were originally most opposed to the mea- 
sure), and from the new freemen, are of the 
most satisfactory kind. The manner in which 
the new festival was celebrated, brings tears to 
the eyes. The First of August, 1838, was ob- 
served in Jamaica as a day of thanksgiving and 
prayer. Sir Lionel Smith, the governor, writes 
to the British Ministry, " It is impossible for 
me to do justice to the good order, deco- 
rum and gratitude which the whole laboring 
population manifested on that happy occasion. 
Though joy beamed on every countenance, it 
was throughout tempered with solemn thank- 
fulness to God, and the churches and chapels 
were everywhere filled with these happy people 
in humble offering of praise.*' 

The Queen, in her speech to the Lords and 
Commons, praised the conduct of the eman- 
cipated population : ' and in 1 840 Sir Charles 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 121 

Metcalfe, the new governor of Jamaica, in his 
address to the Assembly expressed himself to 
that late exasperated body in these terms : "All 
those who are acquainted with the state of the 
island know that our emancipated population 
are as free, as independent in their conduct, as 
well conditioned, as much in the enjoyment of 
abundance, and as strongly sensible of the bless- 
ings of liberty, as any that we know of in any 
country. All disqualifications and distinctions 
of color have ceased; men of all colors have 
equal rights in law, and an equal footing in 
society, and every man's position is settled by 
the same circumstances which regulate that point 
in other free countries, where no difference of 
color exists. It may be asserted, without fear 
of denial, that the former slaves of Jamaica are 
now as secure in all social rights, as freeborn 
Britons." He further describes the erection of 
numerous churches, chapels and schools which 
the new population required, and adds that more 
are still demanded. The legislature, in their 
reply, echo the governor's statement, and say, 
"The peaceful demeanor of the emancipated 
population redounds to their own credit, and 
affords a proof of their continued comfort and 
prosperity." 



122 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

I said, this event is signal in the history of 
civihzation. There are many styles of civiliza- 
tion, and not one only. Ours is full of barbar- 
ities. There are many faculties in man, each of 
which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty 
which is paramount in any period and exerts 
itself through the strongest nation, determines 
the civility of that age : and each age thinks its 
own the perfection of reason. Our culture is 
very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, 
and you shall find it. The well-being consists 
in having a sufficiency of coffee and toast, with 
a daily newspaper; a well glazed parlor, with 
marbles, mirrors and centre-table ; and the ex- 
citement of a few parties and a few rides in a 
year. Such as one house, such are all. The 
owner of a New York manor imitates the man- 
sion and equipage of the London nobleman; 
the Boston merchant rivals his brother of New 
York ; and the villages copy Boston. There 
have been nations elevated by great sentiments. 
Such was the civility of Sparta and the Dorian 
race, whilst it was defective in some of the chief 
elements of ours. That of Athens, again, lay 
in an intellect dedicated to beauty. That of 
Asia Minor in poetry, music and arts ; that 
of Palestine in piety ; that of Rome in military 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 123 

arts and virtues, exalted by a prodigious mag- 
nanimity ; that of China and Japan in the last 
exaggeration of decorum and etiquette. Our 
civility, England determines the style of, inas- 
much as England is the strongest of the family 
of existing nations, and as we are the expansion 
of that people. It is that of a trading nation ; 
it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord 
is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices 
and timidities of that profession. And we are 
shopkeepers, and have acquired the vices and 
virtues that belong to trade. We peddle, we 
truck, we sail, we row, we ride in cars, we creep 
in teams, we go in canals, — to market, and for 
the sale of goods. The national aim and em- 
ployment streams into our ways of thinking, 
our laws, our habits and our manners. The 
customer is the immediate jewel of our souls. 
Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote 
for, and will not contradict. It was, or it seemed 
the dictate of trade, to keep the negro down. 
We had found a race who were less warlike, 
and less energetic shopkeepers than we; who 
had very little skill in trade. We found it very 
convenient to keep them at work, since, by the 
aid of a little whipping, we could get their work 
for nothing but their board and the cost of 



124 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

whips. What if it cost a few unpleasant scenes 
on the coast of Africa ? That was a great way 
off; and the scenes could be endured by some 
sturdy, unscrupulous fellows, who could go, for 
high wages, and bring us the men, and need not 
trouble our ears with the disagreeable particu- 
lars. If any mention was made of homicide, 
madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we 
would let the church-bells ring louder, the 
church-organ swell its peal and drown the hid- 
eous sound. The sugar they raised was excel- 
lent : nobody tasted blood in it. The coffee was 
fragrant ; the tobacco was incense ; the brandy 
made nations happy; the cotton clothed the 
world. What! all raised by these men, and no 
wages ? Excellent ! What a convenience ! They 
seemed created by Providence to bear the heat 
and the whipping, and make these fine articles. 
But unhappily, most unhappily, gentlemen, 
man is born with intellect, as well as with a love 
of sugar ; and with a sense of justice, as well as 
a taste for strong drink. These ripened, as well 
as those. You could not educate him, you could 
not get any poetry, any wisdom, any beauty in 
woman, any strong and commanding character 
in man, but these absurdities would still come 
flashing out, — these absurdities of a demand 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 125 

for justice, a generosity for the weak and op- 
pressed. Unhappily, too, for the planter, the 
laws of nature are in harmony with each other : 
that which the head and the heart demand is 
found to be, in the long run, for what the gross- 
est calculator calls his advantage. The moral 
sense is always supported by the permanent 
interest of the parties. Else, I know not how, in 
our world, any good would ever get done.' It 
was shown to the planters that they, as well as 
the negroes, were slaves ; that though they paid 
no wages, they got very poor work ; that their 
estates were ruining them, under the finest cli- 
mate ; and that they needed the severest mono- 
poly laws at home to keep them from bank- 
ruptcy. The oppression of the slave recoiled 
on them. They were full of vices ; their chil- 
dren were lumps of pride, sloth, sensuality and 
rottenness. The position of woman was nearly 
as bad as it could be ; and, like other robbers, 
they could not sleep in security. Many plant- 
ers have said, since the emancipation, that, be- 
fore that day, they were the greatest slaves on 
the estates. Slavery is no scholar, no improver; 
it does not love the whistle of the railroad ; it 
does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a 
college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd 



126 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

whim of saying what he thinks ; it does not in- 
crease the white population ; it does not improve 
the soil ; everything goes to decay. For these 
reasons the islands proved bad customers to 
England. It was very easy for manufacturers less 
shrewd than those of Birmingham and Manches- 
ter to see that if the state of things in the islands 
was altered, if the slaves had wages, the slaves 
would be clothed, would build houses, would 
fill them with tools, with pottery, with crockery, 
with hardware ; and negro women love fine 
clothes as well as white women. In every naked 
negro of those thousands, they saw a future 
customer. Meantime, they saw further that the 
slave-trade, by keeping in barbarism the whole 
coast of eastern Africa, deprives them of coun- 
tries and nations of customers, if once freedom 
and civility and European manners could get a 
foothold there. But the trade could not be abol- 
ished whilst this hungry West Indian market, 
with an appetite like the grave, cried, ' More, 
more, bring me a hundred a day ; ' they could 
not expect any mitigation in the madness of the 
poor African war-chiefs. These considerations 
opened the eyes of the dullest in Britain. More 
than this, the West Indian estate was owned or 
mortgaged in England, and the owner and the 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 127 

mortgagee had very plain intimations that the 
feeling of English liberty was gaining every hour 
new mass and velocity, and the hostility to such 
as resisted it would be fatal. The House of 
Commons would destroy the protection of island 
produce, and interfere in English politics in the 
island legislation: so they hastened to make 
the best of their position, and accepted the bill. 
These considerations, I doubt not, had their 
weight ; the interest of trade, the interest of the 
revenue, and, moreover, the good fame of the 
action. It was inevitable that men should feel 
these motives. But they do not appear to have 
had an excessive or unreasonable weight. On 
reviewing this history, I think the whole trans- 
action reflects infinite honor on the people and 
parliament of England. It was a stately spec- 
tacle, to see the cause of human rights argued 
with so much patience and generosity and with 
such a mass of evidence before that powerful 
people. It is a creditable incident in the history 
that when, in 1789, the first privy council re- 
port of evidence on the trade (a bulky folio 
embodying all the facts which the London Com- 
mittee had been engaged for years in collecting, 
and all the examinations before the council) was 
presented to the House of Commons, a late day 



128 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

being named for the discussion, in order to give 
members time, — Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Pitt, 
the Prime Minister, and other gentlemen, took 
advantage of the postponement to retire into the 
country to read the report. For months and 
years the bill was debated, with some conscious- 
ness of the extent of its relations, by the first citi- 
zens of England, the foremost men of the earth ; 
every argument was weighed, every particle of 
evidence was sifted and laid in the scale; and, 
at last, the right triumphed, the poor man was 
vindicated, and the oppressor was flung out. 
I know that England has the advantage of try- 
ing the question at a wide distance from the spot 
where the nuisance exists ; the planters are not, 
excepting in rare examples, members of the legis- 
lature. The extent of the empire, and the mag- 
nitude and number of other questions crowding 
into court, keep this one in balance, and prevent 
it from obtaining that ascendency, and being 
urged with that intemperance which a question 
of property tends to acquire. There are causes 
in the composition of the British legislature, and 
the relation of its leaders to the country and to 
Europe, which exclude much that is pitiful and 
injurious in other legislative assemblies. From 
these reasons, the question was discussed with 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 129 

a rare Independence and magnanimity. It was 
not narrowed down to a paltry electioneering 
trap ; and, I must say, a delight in justice, an 
honest tenderness for the poor negro, for man 
suffering these wrongs, combined with the na- 
tional pride, which refused to give the support 
of English soil or the protection of the English 
flag to these disgusting violations of nature. 

Forgive me, fellow citizens, if I own to you, 
that in the last few days that my attention has 
been occupied with this history, I have not 
been able to read a page of it without the most 
painful comparisons. Whilst I have read of 
England, I have thought of New England. 
Whilst I have meditated in my solitary walks 
on the magnanimity of the English Bench 
and Senate, reaching out the benefit of the law 
to the most helpless citizen in her world-wide 
realm, I have found myself oppressed by other 
thoughts. As I have walked in the pastures and 
along the edge of woods, I could not keep my 
imagination on those agreeable figures, for other 
images that intruded on me. I could not see the 
great vision of the patriots and senators who 
have adopted the slave's cause: — they turned 
their backs on me. No : I see other pictures, — 
of mean men ; I see very poor, very ill-clothed. 



130 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

very ignorant men, not surrounded by happy 
friends, — to be plain, — poor black men of ob- 
scure employment as mariners, cooks or stewards, 
in ships, yet citizens of this our Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts, — freeborn as we, — whom 
the slave-laws of the States of South Carolina, 
Georgia and Louisiana have arrested in the 
vessels in which they visited those ports, and 
shut up in jails so long as the vessel remained 
in port, with the stringent addition, that if the 
shipmaster fails to pay the costs of this official 
arrest and the board in jail, these citizens are to 
be sold for slaves, to pay that expense. This 
man, these men, I see, and no law to save them. 
Fellow citizens, this crime will not be hushed 
up any longer. I have learned that a citizen of 
Nantucket, walking in New Orleans, found a 
freeborn citizen of Nantucket, a man, too, of 
great personal worth, and, as it happened, very 
dear to him, as having saved his own life, work- 
ing chained in the streets of that city, kid- 
napped by such a process as this. In the sleep 
of the laws, the private interference of two ex- 
cellent citizens of Boston has, I have ascertained, 
rescued several natives of this State from these 
Southern prisons. Gentlemen, I thought the 
deck of a Massachusetts ship was as much the 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 131 

territory of Massachusetts as the floor on which 
we stand. It should be as sacred as the temple 
of God. The poorest fishing-smack that floats 
under the shadow of an iceberg in the Northern 
seas, or hunts whale in the Southern ocean, 
should be encompassed by her laws with com- 
fort and protection, as much as within the arms 
of Cape Ann or Cape Cod. And this kidnap- 
ping is suffered within our own land and fed- 
eration, whilst the fourth article of the Consti- 
tution of the United States ordains in terms, 
that, " The citizens of each State shall be enti- 
tled to all privileges and immunities of citizens 
in the several States.'* If such a damnable 
outrage can be committed on the person of a 
citizen with impunity, let the Governor break 
the broad seal of the State ; he bears the sword 
in vain." The Governor of Massachusetts is a 
trifler ; the State-House in Boston is a play- 
house ; the General Court is a dishonored body, 
if they make laws which they cannot execute. 
The great-hearted Puritans have left no pos- 
terity. The rich men may walk in State Street, 
but they walk without honor ; and the farmers 
may brag their democracy in the country, but 
they are disgraced men. If the State has no 
power to defend its own people in its own 



132 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

shipping, because it has delegated that power to 
the Federal Government, has it no representation 
in the Federal Government?' Are those men 
dumb ? I am no lawyer, and cannot indicate 
the forms applicable to the case, but here is 
something which transcends all forms. Let the 
senators and representatives of the State, con- 
taining a population of a million freemen, go in 
a body before the Congress and say that they 
have a demand to make on them, so imperative 
that all functions of government must stop until 
it is satisfied. If ordinary legislation cannot 
reach it, then extraordinary must be applied. 
The Congress should instruct the President to 
send to those ports of Charleston, Savannah 
and New Orleans such orders and such force as 
should release, forthwith, all such citizens of 
Massachusetts as were holden in prison without 
the allegation of any crime, and should set on 
foot the strictest inquisition to discover where 
such persons, brought into slavery by these 
local laws at any time heretofore, may now 
be. That first ; and then, let order be taken to 
indemnify all such as have been incarcerated. 
As for dangers to the Union, from such de- 
mands ! — ther Union already is at an end 
when the first citizen of Massachusetts is thus 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 133 

outraged. Is it an union and covenant in 
which the State of Massachusetts agrees to be 
imprisoned, and the State of Carolina to im- 
prison ? ' Gentlemen, I am loath to say harsh 
things, and perhaps I know too little of politics 
for the smallest weight to attach to any censure 
of mine, — but I am at a loss how to character- 
ize the tameness and silence of the two senators 
and the ten representatives of the State at 
Washington. To what purpose have we clothed 
each of those representatives with the power 
of seventy thousand persons, and each senator 
with near half a million, if they are to sit dumb 
at their desks and see their constituents captured 
and sold ; — perhaps to gentlemen sitting by 
them in the hall ? There is a scandalous rumor 
that has been swelling louder of late years, — 
perhaps wholly false, — that members are bul- 
lied into silence by Southern gentlemen. It is 
so easy to omit to speak, or even to be absent 
when deHcate things are to be handled. I may 
as well say, what all men feel, that whilst our 
very amiable and very innocent representatives 
and senators at Washington are accomplished 
lawyers and merchants, and very eloquent at 
dinners and at caucuses, there is a disastrous 
want of men from New England. I would gladly 



134 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

make exceptions, and you will not suffer me to 
forget one eloquent old man, in whose veins the 
blood of Massachusetts rolls, and who singly 
has defended the freedom of speech, and the 
rights of the free, against the usurpation of the 
slave-holder." But the reader of Congressional 
debates, in New England, is perplexed to see 
with what admirable sweetness and patience the 
majority of the free States are schooled and 
ridden by the minority of slave-holders. What 
if we should send thither representatives who 
were a particle less amiable and less innocent? 
I entreat you, sirs, let not this stain attach, let 
not this misery accumulate any longer. If the 
managers of our political parties are too prudent 
and too cold ; — if, most unhappily, the ambi- 
tious class of young men and political men have 
found out that these neglected victims are poor 
and without weight ; that they have no graceful 
hospitalities to offer; no valuable business to 
throw into any man's hands, no strong vote to 
cast at the elections ; and therefore may with 
impunity be left in their chains or to the chance 
of chains, — then let the citizens in their pri- 
mary capacity take up their cause on this very 
ground, and say to the government of the. State, 
and of the Union, that government exists to 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 135 

defend the weak and the poor and the injured 
party; the rich and the strong can better take 
care of themselves. And as an omen and as- 
surance of success, I point you to the bright 
example which England set you, on this day, 
ten years ago. 

There are other comparisons and other im- 
perative duties which come sadly to mind, — 
but I do not wish to darken the hours of this 
day by crimination ; I turn gladly to the rightful 
theme, to the bright aspects of the occasion. 

This event was a moral revolution. The his- 
tory of it is before you. Here was no prodigy, 
no fabulous hero, no Trojan horse, no bloody 
war, but all was achieved by plain means of plain 
men, working not under a leader, but under a 
sentiment. Other revolutions have been the in- 
surrection of the oppressed; this was the repent- 
ance of the tyrant. It was the masters revolting 
from their mastery. The slave-holder said, ^ I 
will not hold slaves.' The end was noble and 
the means were pure. Hence the elevation and 
pathos of this chapter of history. The lives of 
the advocates are pages of greatness, and the 
connection of the eminent senators with this 
question constitutes the immortalizing moments 
of those men's lives. The bare enunciation of 



136 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

the theses at which the lawyers and legislators 
arrived, gives a glow to the heart of the reader. 
Lord Chancellor Northington is the author of 
the famous sentence, " As soon as any man puts 
his foot on English ground, he becomes free." 
" I was a slave,** said the counsel of Somerset, 
speaking for his client, " for I was in America : 
I am now in a country where the common rights 
of mankind are known and regarded." Gran- 
ville Sharpe filled the ear of the judges with the 
sound principles that had from time to time been 
affirmed by the legal authorities : " Derived 
power cannot be superior to the power from 
which it is derived : " " The reasonableness of 
the law is the soul of the law : " " It is better 
to suffer every evil, than to consent to any.** 
Out it would come, the God*s truth, out it 
came, like a bolt from a' cloud, for all the 
mumbling of the lawyers. One feels very sen- 
sibly in all this history that a great heart and 
soul are behind there, superior to any man, and 
making use of each, in turn, and infinitely at- 
tractive to every person according to the degree 
of reason in his own mind, so that this cause 
has had the power to draw to it every particle 
of talent and of worth in England, from the 
beginning. All the great geniuses of the British 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 137 

senate, Fox, Pitt, Burke, Grenville, Sheridan, 
Grey, Canning, ranged themselves on its side ; 
the poet Cowper wrote for it : Franklin, Jeffer- 
son, Washington, in this country, all recorded 
their votes. All men remember the subtlety and 
the fire of indignation which the " Edinburgh 
Review " contributed to the cause ; and every 
liberal mind, poet, preacher, moralist, statesman, 
has had the fortune to appear somewhere for 
this cause. On the other part, appeared the 
reign of pounds and shillings, and all manner of 
rage and stupidity ; a resistance which drew from 
Mr. Huddlestone in Parliament the observa- 
tion, " That a curse attended this trade even in 
the mode of defending it. By a certain fatality, 
none but the vilest arguments were brought 
forward, which corrupted the very persons who 
used them. Every one of these was built on the 
narrow ground of interest, of pecuniary profit, 
of sordid gain, in opposition to every motive 
that had reference to humanity, justice, and re- 
ligion, or to that great principle which compre- 
hended them all." This moral force perpetually 
reinforces and dignifies the friends of this cause. 
It gave that tenacity to their point which has 
insured ultimate triumph ; and it gave that 
superiority in reason, in imagery, in eloquence, 



138 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

which makes in all countries anti-slavery meet- 
ings so attractive to the people, and has made 
it a proverb in Massachusetts, that " eloquence 
is dog-cheap at the anti-slavery chapel." 

I will say further that we are indebted mainly 
to this movement and to the continuers of it, 
for the popular discussion of every point of prac- 
tical ethics, and a reference of every question to 
the absolute standard. It is notorious that the 
political, religious and social schemes, with which 
the minds of men are now most occupied, have 
been matured, or at least broached, in the free 
and daring discussions of these assemblies. Men 
have become aware, through the emancipation 
and kindred events, of the presence of powers 
which, in their days of darkness, they had over- 
looked. Virtuous men will not again rely on 
political agents. They have found out the dele-« 
terious effect of political association. Up to this 
day we have allowed to statesmen a paramount 
social standing, and we bow low to them as to 
the great. We cannot extend this deference 
to them any longer. The secret cannot be kept, 
that the seats of power are filled by underlings, 
ignorant, timid and selfish to a degree to destroy 
all claim, excepting that on compassion, to the 
society of the just and generous. What happened 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 139 

notoriously to an American ambassador in 
England, that he found himself compelled to 
palter and to disguise the fact that he was a 
slave-breeder, happens to men of state. Their 
vocation is a presumption against them among 
well-meaning people. The superstition respect- 
ing power and office is going to the ground. The 
stream of human affairs flows its own way, and 
is very little affected by the activity of legis- 
lators. What great masses of men wish done, 
will be done ; and they do not wish it for a 
freak, but because it is their state and natural 
end. There are now other energies than force, 
other than political, which no man in future 
can allow himself to disregard. There is direct 
conversation and influence. A man is to make 
himself felt by his proper force. The tendency 
of things runs steadily to this point, namely, to 
put every man on his merits, and to give him 
so much power as he naturally exerts, — no 
more, no less. Of course, the timid and base 
persons, all who are conscious of no worth in 
themselves, and who owe all their place to the 
opportunities which the older order of things 
allowed them, to deceive and defraud men, 
shudder at the change, and would fain silence 
every honest voice, and lock up every house 



140 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

where liberty and innovation can be pleaded for. 
They would raise mobs, for fear is very cruel. 
But the strong and healthy yeomen and husbands 
of the land, the self-sustaining class of inventive 
and industrious men, fear no competition or 
superiority. Come what will, their faculty cannot 
be spared. 

The First of August marks the entrance of 
a new element into modern politics, namely, the 
civilization of the negro. A man is added to 
the human family. Not the least affecting part 
of this history of aboHtion is the annihilation of 
the old indecent nonsense about the nature 
of the negro. In the case of the ship Zong, in 
178 1, whose master had thrown one hundred 
and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, to cheat 
the underwriters, the first jury gave a verdict 
in favor of the master and owners : they had 
a right to do what they had done. Lord Mans- 
field is reported to have said on the bench, 
" The matter left to the jury is, — Was it from 
necessity ? For they had no doubt — though 
it shocks one very much — that the case of 
slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown 
overboard. It is a very shocking case." But a 
more enlightened and humane opinion began to 
prevail. Mr. Clarkson, early in his career, made 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 141 

a collection of African productions and manu- 
factures, as specimens of the arts and culture of 
the negro ; comprising cloths and loom, weapons, 
polished stones and woods, leather, glass, dyes, 
ornaments, soap, pipe-bowls and trinkets. These 
he showed to Mr. Pitt, who saw and handled 
them with extreme interest. " On sight of these," 
says Clarkson, " many sublime thoughts seemed 
to rush at once into his mind, some of which 
he expressed ; " and hence appeared to arise a 
project which was always dear to him, of the 
civilization of Africa, — a dream which forever 
elevates his fame. In 1791, Mr. Wilberforce 
announced to the House of Commons, " We 
have already gained one victory : we have ob- 
tained for these poor creatures the recognition of 
their human nature, which for a time was most 
shamefully denied them." It was the sarcasm 
of Montesquieu, " it would not do to suppose 
that negroes were men, lest it should turn out 
that whites were not ; " for the white has, for 
ages, done what he could to keep the negro in 
that hoggish state. His laws have been furies. 
It now appears that the negro race is, more than 
any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The 
emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have 
wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as 



142 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

when a thermometer is brought out of the shade 
into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears. 
If, before, he was taxed with such stupidity, or 
such defective vision, that he could not set a 
table square to the walls of an apartment, he is 
now the principal if not the only mechanic in 
the West Indies ; and is, besides, an architect, 
a physician, a lawyer, a magistrate, an editor, 
and a valued and increasing political power. The 
recent testimonies of Sturge, of Thome and 
Kimball, of Gurney, of Philippo, are very ex- 
plicit on this point, the capacity and the success 
of the colored and the black population in em- 
ployments of skill, of profit and of trust ; and 
best of all is the testimony to their moderation. 
They receive hints and advances from the whites 
that they will be gladly received as subscribers 
to the Exchange, as members of this or that 
committee of trust. They hold back, and say 
to each other that " social position is not to be 
gained by pushing." 

I have said that this event interests us because 
it came mainly from the concession of the whites ; 
I add, that in part it is the earning of the blacks. 
They won the pity and respect which they have 
received, by their powers and native endow- 
ments. I think this a circumstance of the high- 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 143 

est import. Their whole future is in it. Our 
planet, before the age of written history, had its 
races of savages, like the generations of sour 
paste, or the animalcules that wiggle and bite in 
a drop of putrid water. Who cares for these or 
for their wars ? We do not wish a world of bugs 
or of birds ; neither afterward of Scythians, 
Caraibs or Feejees. The grand style of Nature, 
her great periods, is all we observe in them. 
Who cares for oppressing whites, or oppressed 
blacks, twenty centuries ago, more than for bad 
dreams ? Eaters and food are in the harmony 
of Nature ; and there too is the germ forever 
protected, unfolding gigantic leaf after leaf, a 
newer flower, a richer fruit, in every period, yet 
its next product is never to be guessed. It will 
only save what is worth saving ; and it saves 
not by compassion, but by power. It appoints 
no police to guard the lion but his teeth and 
claws ; no fort or city for the bird but his wings ; 
no rescue for flies and mites but their spawning 
numbers, which no ravages can overcome. It 
deals with men after the same manner. If they 
are rude and foolish, down they must go. When 
at last in a race a new principle appears, an idea, 
— that conserves it; ideas only save races. If 
the black man is feeble and not important to 



144 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

the existing races, not on a parity with the best 
race, the black man must serve, and be exter- 
minated.' But if the black man carries in his 
bosom an indispensable element of a new and 
coming civilization ; for the sake of that element, 
no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can 
hurt him : he will survive and play his part. So 
now, the arrival in the world of such men as 
Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the 
leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, 
outweighs in good omen all the English and 
American humanity. The anti-slavery of the 
whole world is dust in the balance before this, — 
is a poor squeamishness and nervousness : the 
might and the right are here : here is the anti- 
slave : here is man : and if you have man, black 
or white is an insignificance. The intellect, — 
that is miraculous ! Who has it, has the talis- 
man : his skin and bones, though they were 
of the color of night, are transparent, and the 
everlasting stars shine through, with attractive 
beams. But a compassion for that which is not 
and cannot be useful or lovely, is degrading and 
futile. All the songs and nev/spapers and money 
subscriptions and vituperation of such as do not 
think with us, will avail nothing against a fact. 
I say to you, you must save yourself, black or 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 145 

white, man or woman ; other help is none. I 
esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be the 
proud discovery that the black race can contend 
with the white : that in the great anthem which 
we call history, a piece of many parts and vast 
compass, after playing a long time a very low 
and subdued accompaniment, they perceive the 
time arrived when they can strike in with effect 
and take a master's part in the music. The 
civility of the world has reached that pitch that 
their more moral genius is becoming indis- 
pensable, and the quality of this race is to be 
honored for itself For this, they have been 
preserved in sandy deserts, in rice-swamps, in 
kitchens and shoe-shops, so long : now let them 
emerge, clothed and in their own form. 

There remains the very elevated consideration 
which the subject opens, but which belongs to 
more abstract views than we are now taking, 
this, namely, that the civility of no race can be 
perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a 
doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest 
philosophy, that man is one, and that you can- 
not injure any member, without a sympathetic 
injury to all the members. America is not civil, 
whilst Africa is barbarous." 

These considerations seem to leave no choice 



146 WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 

for the action of the intellect and the conscience 
of the country. There have been moments in 
this, as well as in every piece of moral history, 
when there seemed room for the infusions of a 
skeptical philosophy; when it seemed doubtful 
whether brute force would not triumph in the 
eternal struggle. I doubt not that, sometimes, a 
despairing negro, when jumping over the ship's 
sides to escape from the white devils who sur- 
rounded him, has believed there was no vin- 
dication of right ; it is horrible to think of, but 
it seemed so. I doubt not that sometimes the 
negro's friend, in the face of scornful and brutal 
hundreds of traders and drivers, has felt his heart 
sink. Especially, it seems to me, some degree 
of despondency is pardonable, when he observes 
the men of conscience and of intellect, his own 
natural allies and champions, — those whose 
attention should be nailed to the grand objects 
of this cause, so hotly offended by whatever 
incidental petulances or infirmities of indiscreet 
defenders of the negro, as to permit themselves 
to be ranged with the enemies of the human 
race ; and names which should be the alarums of 
liberty and the watchwords of truth, are mixed 
up with all the rotten rabble of selfishness and 
tyranny.' I assure myself that this coldness 



WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION 147 

and blindness will pass away. A single noble 
wind of sentiment will scatter them forever. I 
am sure that the good and wise elders, the 
ardent and generous youth, will not permit 
what is incidental and exceptional to with- 
draw their devotion from the essential and 
permanent characters of the question. There 
have been moments, I said, when men might 
be forgiven who doubted. Those moments are 
past. Seen in masses, it cannot be disputed, 
there is progress in human society. There 
is a blessed necessity by which the interest of 
men is always driving them to the right ; and, 
again, making all crime mean and ugly. The 
genius of the Saxon race, friendly to liberty; 
the enterprise, the very muscular vigor of this 
nation, are inconsistent with slavery. The In- 
tellect, with blazing eye, looking through history 
from the beginning onward, gazes on this blot 
and it disappears. The sentiment of Right, once 
very low and indistinct, but ever more articulate, 
because it is the voice of the universe, pro- 
nounces Freedom. The Power that built this 
fabric of things affirms it in the heart ; and in 
the history of the First of August, has made a 
sign to the ages, of his will. 



V 

WAR 

The archangel Hope 

Looks to the azure cope. 
Waits through dark ages for the morn. 
Defeated day by day, but unto Victory borne 



WAR 

IT has been a favorite study of modern philo- 
sophy to indicate the steps of human pro- 
gress, to watch the rising of a thought in one 
man's mind, the communication of it to a few, 
to a small minority, its expansion and general 
reception, until it publishes itself to the world 
by destroying the existing laws and institutions, 
and the generation of new. Looked at in this 
general and historical way, many things wear a 
very different face from that they show near 
by, and one at a time, — and, particularly, war. 
War, which to sane men at the present day 
begins to look like an epidemic insanity, break- 
ing out here and there like the cholera or influ- 
enza, infecting men's brains instead of their 
bowels, — when seen in the remote past, in the 
infancy of society, appears a part of the connec- 
tion of events, and, in its place, necessary. 

As far as history has preserved to us the slow 
unfoldings of any savage tribe, it is not easy to 
see how war could be avoided by such wild, 
passionate, needy, ungoverned, strong-bodied 
creatures. For in the infancy of society, when 
a thin population and improvidence make the 



152 WAR 

supply of food and of shelter insufficient and 
very precarious, and when hunger, thirst, ague 
and frozen limbs universally take precedence 
of the wants of the mind and the heart, the 
necessities of the strong will certainly be satis- 
fied at the cost of the weak, at whatever peril 
of future revenge. It is plain, too, that in the 
first dawnings of the religious sentiment, that 
blends itself with their passions and is oil to 
the fire. Not only every tribe has war-gods, 
religious festivals in victory, but religious wars. 
The student of history acquiesces the more 
readily in this copious bloodshed of the early 
annals, bloodshed in God*s name too, when he 
learns that it is a temporary and preparatory 
state, and does actively forward the culture of 
man. War educates the senses, calls into action 
the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings 
men into such swift and close collision in crit- 
ical moments that man measures man. On its 
own scale, on the virtues it loves, it endures no 
counterfeit, but shakes the whole society until 
every atom falls into the place its specific gravity 
assigns it." It presently finds the value of good 
sense and of foresight, and Ulysses takes rank 
next to Achilles. The leaders, picked men of 
a courage and vigor tried and augmented in fifty 



WAR 153 

battles, are emulous to distinguish themselves 
above each other by new merits, as clemency, 
hospitality, splendor of living. The people imi- 
tate the chiefs. The strong tribe, in which war 
has become an art, attack and conquer their 
neighbors, and teach them their arts and virtues. 
New territory, augmented numbers and extended 
interests call out new virtues and abilities, and 
the tribe makes long strides. And, finally, when 
much progress has been made, all its secrets of 
wisdom and art are disseminated by its invasions. 
Plutarch, in his essay On the Fortune of Alex- 
ander, considers the invasion and conquest of 
the East by Alexander as one of the most bright 
and pleasing pages in history ; and it must be 
owned he gives sound reason for his opinion. 
It had the effect of uniting into one great inter- 
est the divided commonwealths of Greece, and 
infusing a new and more enlarged public spirit 
into the councils of their statesmen. It carried 
the arts and language and philosophy of the 
Greeks into the sluggish and barbarous nations 
of Persia, Assyria and India. It introduced the 
arts of husbandry among tribes of hunters and 
shepherds. It weaned the Scythians and Per- 
sians from some cruel and licentious practices 
to a more civil way of life. It introduced the 



154 WAR 

sacredness of marriage among them. It built 
seventy cities, and sowed the Greek customs 
and humane laws over Asia, and united hostile 
nations under one code. It brought different 
families of the human race together, — to blows 
at first, but afterwards to truce, to trade and to 
intermarriage. It would be very easy to show 
analogous benefits that have resulted from mili- 
tary movements of later ages. 

Considerations of this kind lead us to a true 
view of the nature and office of war. We see it 
is the subject of all history ; that it has been 
the principal employment of the most con- 
spicuous men ; that it is at this moment the 
delight of half the world, of almost all young 
and ignorant persons ; that it is exhibited 
to us continually in the dumb show of brute 
nature, where war between tribes, and between 
individuals of the same tribe, perpetually rages. 
The microscope reveals miniature butchery in 
atomies and infinitely small biters that swim 
and fight in an illuminated drop of water ; and 
the little globe is but a too faithful miniature 
of the large. 

What does all this war, beginning from the 
lowest races and reaching up to man, signify ? 
Is it not manifest that it covers a great and 



WAR 155 

beneficent principle, which Nature had deeply 
at heart ? What is that principle ? — It is self- 
help. Nature implants with life the instinct 
of self-help, perpetual struggle to be, to resist 
opposition, to attain to freedom, to attain to 
a mastery and the security of a permanent, self- 
defended being; and to each creature these 
objects are made so dear that it risks its life 
continually in the struggle for these ends. 

But whilst this principle, necessarily, is in- 
wrought into the fabric of every creature, yet it 
is but one instinct ; and though a primary one, 
or we may say the very first, yet the appearance 
of the other instincts immediately modifies and 
controls this ; turns its energies into harmless, 
useful and high courses, showing thereby what 
was its ultimate design; and, finally, takes out 
its fangs. The instinct of self-help is very early 
unfolded in the coarse and merely brute form 
of war, only in the childhood and imbecility of 
the other instincts, and remains in that form 
only until their development. It is the ignorant 
and childish part of mankind that is the fighting 
part. Idle and vacant minds want excitement, 
as all boys kill cats. Bull-baiting, cockpits and 
the boxer's ring are the enjoyment of the part 
of society whose animal nature alone has been 



156 WAR 

developed. In some parts of this country, where 
the intellectual and moral faculties have as yet 
scarcely any culture, the absorbing topic of all 
conversation is whipping; who fought, and 
which whipped ? Of man, boy or beast, the only 
trait that much interests the speakers is the 
pugnacity.' And why? Because the speaker 
has as yet no other image of manly activity and 
virtue, none of endurance, none of perseverance, 
none of charity, none of the attainment of truth. 
Put him into a circle of cultivated men, where 
the conversation broaches the great questions 
that besiege the human reason, and he would be 
dumb and unhappy, as an Indian in church. 

To men of a sedate and mature spirit, in 
whom is any knowledge or mental activity, the 
detail of battle becomes insupportably tedious 
and revolting. It is like the talk of one of those 
monomaniacs whom we sometimes meet in 
society, who converse on horses ; and Fontenelle 
expressed a volume of meaning when he said, 
"I hate war, for it spoils conversation." 

Nothing is plainer than that the sympathy 
with war is a juvenile and temporary state. Not 
only the moral sentiment, but trade, learning 
and whatever makes intercourse, conspire to 
put it down. Trade, as all men know, is the 



WAR 157 

antagonist of war. Wherever there is no pro- 
perty, the people will put on the knapsack for 
bread ; but trade is instantly endangered and 
destroyed. And, moreover, trade brings men 
to look each other in the face, and gives the 
parties the knowledge that these enemies over 
sea or over the mountain are such men as we ; 
who laugh and grieve, who love and fear, as we 
do. And learning and art, and especially religion 
weave ties that make war look like fratricide, as 
it is. And as all history is the picture of war, 
as we have said, so it is no less true that it is 
the record of the mitigation and decline of war. 
Early in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the 
Italian cities had grown so populous and strong 
that they forced the rural nobility to dismantle 
their castles, which were dens of cruelty, and 
come and reside in the towns. The popes, to 
their eternal honor, declared religious jubilees, 
during which all hostilities were suspended 
throughout Christendom, and man had a breath- 
ing space. The increase of civility has abolished 
the use of poison and of torture, once supposed 
as necessary as navies now. And, finally, the 
art of war, what with gunpowder and tactics, has 
made, as all men know, battles less frequent and 
less murderous. 



158 WAR 

By all these means, war has been steadily on 
the decline ; and we read with astonishment of 
the beastly fighting of the old times. Only in 
Elizabeth's time, out of the European waters, 
piracy was all but universal. The proverb was, 
— "No peace beyond the line;'* and the sea- 
man shipped on the buccaneer's bargain, " No 
prey, no pay." The celebrated Cavendish, who 
was thought in his times a good Christian man, 
wrote thus to Lord Hunsdon, on his return from 
a voyage round the world: "Sept. 1588. It 
hath pleased Almighty God to suifer me to cir- 
cumpass the whole globe of the world, entering 
in at the Strait of Magellan, and returning by 
the Cape of Buena Esperan9a ; in which voy- 
age, I have either discovered or brought certain 
intelligence of all the rich places of the world, 
which were ever discovered by any Christian. I 
navigated along the coast of Chili, Peru, and 
New Spain, where I made great spoils, I burnt 
and sunk nineteen sail of ships ^ small and great. 
All the villages and towns that ever I landed aty 
I burned and spoiled. And had I not been dis- 
covered upon the coast, I had taken great quan- 
tity of treasure. The matter of most profit to 
me was a great ship of the king's, which I took 
at California," etc. And the good Cavendish 



WAR 159 

piously begins this statement, — " It hath pleased 
Almighty God.'* 

Indeed, our American annals have preserved 
the vestiges of barbarous warfare down to more 
recent times. I read in Williams's History 
of Maine, that " Assacombuit, the Sagamore 
of the Anagunticook tribe, was remarkable for 
his turpitude and ferocity above all other known 
Indians; that, in 1705, Vaudreuil sent him to 
France, where he was introduced to the king. 
When he appeared at court, he lifted up his 
hand and said, ' This hand has slain a hundred 
and fifty of your majesty's enemies within the 
territories of New England.' This so pleased 
the king that he knighted him, and ordered 
a pension of eight livres a day to be paid him 
during life." This valuable person, on his return 
to America, took to killing his own neighbors 
and kindred, with such appetite that his tribe 
combined against him, and would have killed 
him had he not fled his country forever. 

The scandal which we feel in such facts cer- 
tainly shows that we have got on a little. All 
history is the decline of war, though the slow 
decline. All that society has yet gained is miti- 
gation : the doctrine of the right of war still 
remains. 



i6o WAR 

For ages (for ideas work in ages, and animate 
vast societies of men) the human race has gone 
on under the tyranny — shall I so call it? — 
of this first brutish form of their effort to be 
men ; that is, for ages they have shared so much 
of the nature of the lower animals, the tiger and 
the shark, and the savages of the water-drop. 
They have nearly exhausted all the good and 
all the evil of this form : they have held as fast 
to this degradation as their worst enemy could 
desire ; but all things have an end, and so has 
this.' The eternal germination of the better 
has unfolded new powers, new instincts, which 
were really concealed under this rough and base 
rind. The sublime question has startled one and 
another happy soul in different quarters of the 
globe, — -Cannot love be, as well as hate? 
Would not love answer the same end, or even 
a better ? Cannot peace be, as well as war ? 

This thought is no man's invention, neither 
St. Pierre's nor Rousseau's, but the rising of 
the general tide in the human soul, — and rising 
highest, and first made visible, in the most 
simple and pure souls, who have therefore 
announced it to us beforehand ; but presently 
we all see it. It has now become so distinct as to 
be a social thought : societies can be formed on 



WAR i6i 

it. It IS expounded, illustrated, defined, with 
different degrees of clearness ; and its actualiza- 
tion, or the measures it should inspire, predicted 
according to the light of each seer. 

The idea itself is the epoch ; the fact that it 
has become so distinct to any small number of 
persons as to become a subject of prayer and 
hope, of concert and discussion, — that is the 
commanding fact. This having come, much 
more will follow. Revolutions go not backward. 
The star once risen, though only one man in 
the hemisphere has yet seen its upper limb 
in the horizon, will mount and mount, until it 
becomes visible to other men, to multitudes, and 
climbs the zenith of all eyes. And so it is not 
a great matter how long men refuse to believe 
the advent of peace : war is on its last legs ; and 
a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence 
of civilization over barbarism, of liberal govern- 
ments over feudal forms. The question for us 
is only How soon ? 

That the project of peace should appear 
visionary to great numbers of sensible men ; 
should appear laughable even, to numbers ; 
should appear to the grave and good-natured to 
be embarrassed with extreme practical difficul- 
ties, — is very natural. * This is a poor, tedious 



XI 



i62 WAR 

society of yours/ they say : 'we do not see 
what good can come of it. Peace ! why, we are 
all at peace now. But if a foreign nation should 
wantonly insult or plunder our commerce, or, 
worse yet, should land on our shores to rob and 
kill, you would not have us sit, and be robbed 
and killed ? You mistake the times ; you over- 
estimate the virtue of men. You forget that the 
quiet which now sleeps in cities and in farms, 
which lets the wagon go unguarded and the 
farmhouse unbolted, rests on the perfect under- 
standing of all men that the musket, the halter 
and the jail stand behind there, ready to punish 
any disturber of it. All admit that this would 
be the best policy, if the world were all a church, 
if all the men were the best men, if all would 
agree to accept this rule. But it is absurd for 
one nation to attempt it alone.' ' 

In the first place, we answer that we never 
make much account of objections which merely 
respect the actual state of the world at this mo- 
ment, but which admit the general expediency 
and permanent excellence of the project. What 
is the best must be the true ; and what is 
true — that is, what is at bottom fit and agree- 
able to the constitution of man — must at last 
prevail over all obstruction and all opposition. 



WAR 163 

There is no good now enjoyed by society that 
was not once as problematical and visionary as 
this. It is the tendency of the true interest of 
man to become his desire and steadfast aim. 

But, further, it is a lesson which all history 
teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not 
in circumstances. We have all grown up in the 
sight of frigates and navy-yards, of armed forts 
and islands, of arsenals and militia. The refer- 
ence to any foreign register will inform us of 
the number of thousand or million men that 
are now under arms in the vast colonial system 
of the British Empire, of Russia, Austria and 
France ; and one is scared to find at what a 
cost the peace of the globe is kept. This vast 
apparatus of artillery, of fleets, of stone bastions 
and trenches and embankments ; this incessant 
patrolling of sentinels ; this waving of national 
flags ; this reveille and evening gun ; this mar- 
tial music and endless playing of marches and 
singing of military and naval songs seem to 
us to constitute an imposing actual, which will 
not yield in centuries to the feeble, deprecatory 
voices of a handful of friends of peace. 

Thus always we are daunted by the appear- 
ances ; not seeing that their whole value lies 
at bottom in the state of mind. It is really ^ 



1 64 WAR 

thought that built this portentous war-establish- 
ment, and a thought shall also melt it away.' 
Every nation and every man instantly surround 
themselves with a material apparatus which ex- 
actly corresponds to their moral state, or their 
state of thought. Observe how every truth and 
every error, each a thought of some man's mind, 
clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, lan- 
guage, ceremonies, newspapers. Observe the 
ideas of the present day, — orthodoxy, skepti- 
cism, missions, popular education, temperance, 
anti-masonry, anti-slavery ; see how each of 
these abstractions has embodied itself in an 
imposing apparatus in the community ; and how 
timber, brick, lime and stone have flown into 
convenient shape, obedient to the master-idea 
reigning in the minds of many persons.^ 

You shall hear, some day, of a wild fancy 
which some man has in his brain, of the mis- 
chief of secret oaths. Come again one or two 
years afterwards, and you shall see it has built 
great houses of solid wood and brick and mortar. 
You shall see a hundred presses printing a million 
sheets ; you shall see men and horses and 
wheels made to walk, run and roll for it : this 
great body of matter thus executing that one 
man's wild thought. This happens daily, yearly 



WAR 165 

about us, with half thoughts, often with flimsy 
lies, pieces of policy and speculation. With 
good nursing they will last three or four years 
before they will come to nothing. But when a 
truth appears, — as, for instance, a perception 
in the wit of one Columbus that there is land 
in the Western Sea ; though he alone of all 
men has that thought, and they all jeer, — it 
will build ships ; it will build fleets ; it will 
carry over half Spain and half England ; it will 
plant a colony, a state, nations and half a globe 
full of men. 

We surround ourselves always, according to 
our freedom and ability, with true images of 
ourselves in things, whether it be ships or books 
or cannons or churches. The standing army, the 
arsenal, the camp and the gibbet do not appertain 
to man. They only serve as an index to show 
where man is now ; what a bad, ungoverned 
temper he has ; what an ugly neighbor he is ; 
how his affections halt ; how low his hope lies. 
He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees 
in their glitter what beforehand he feels in his 
heart. It is avarice and hatred ; it is that quiv- 
ering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built 
magazines and powder-houses. 

It follows of course that the least change in 



i66 WAR 

the man will change his circumstances ; the least 
enlargement of his ideas, the least mitigation of 
his feelings in respect to other men ; if, for ex- 
ample, he could be inspired with a tender kind- 
ness to the souls of men, and should come to 
feel that every man was another self with whom 
he might come to join, as left hand works with 
right. Every degree of the ascendency of this 
feeling would cause the most striking changes 
of external things: the tents would be struck; 
the men-of-war would rot ashore ; the arms 
rust ; the cannon would become street-posts ; 
the pikes, a fisher's harpoon ; the marching reg- 
iment would be a caravan of emigrants, peaceful 
pioneers at the fountains of the Wabash and the 
Missouri. And so it must and will be : bay- 
onet and sword must first retreat a little from 
their ostentatious prominence ; then quite hide 
themselves, as the sheriff's halter does now, 
inviting the attendance only of relations and 
friends ; and then, lastly, will be transferred to 
the museums of the curious, as poisoning and 
torturing tools are at this day. 

War and peace thus resolve themselves into 
a mercury of the state of cultivation. At a cer- 
tain stage of his progress, the man fights, if he 
be of a sound body and mind. At a certain 



WAR 167 

higher stage, he makes no offensive demonstra- 
tion, but is alert to repel injury, and of an un- 
conquerable heart." At a still higher stage, he 
comes into the region of holiness ; passion has 
passed away from him ; his warlike nature is 
all converted into an active medicinal principle ; 
he sacrifices himself, and accepts with alacrity 
wearisome tasks of denial and charity ; but, 
being attacked, he bears it and turns the other 
cheek, as one engaged, throughout his being, 
no longer to the service of an individual but to 
the common soul of all men. 

Since the peace question has been before the 
public mind, those who affirm its right and 
expediency have naturally been met with objec- 
tions more or less weighty. There are cases fre- 
quently put by the curious, — moral problems, 
like those problems in arithmetic which in long 
winter evenings the rustics try the hardness of 
their heads in ciphering out. And chiefly it is 
said, — Either accept this principle for better, 
for worse, carry it out to the end, and meet its 
absurd consequences ; or else, if you pretend to 
set an arbitrary limit, a " Thus far, no farther," 
then give up the principle, and take that limit 
which the common sense of all mankind has 
set, and which distinguishes offensive war as 



1 68 WAR 

criminal, defensive war as just. Otherwise, if 
you go for no war, then be consistent, and give 
up self-defence in the highway, in your own 
house. Will you push it thus far ? Will you 
stick to your principle of non-resistance when 
your strong-box is broken open, when your 
wife and babes are insulted and slaughtered in 
your sight ? If you say yes, you only invite the 
robber and assassin ; and a few bloody-minded 
desperadoes would soon butcher the good. 

In reply to this charge of absurdity on the ex- 
treme peace doctrine, as shown in the supposed 
consequences, I wish to say that such deduc- 
tions consider only one half of the fact. They 
look only at the passive side of the friend of 
peace, only at his passivity ; they quite omit to 
consider his activity. But no man, it may be 
presumed, ever embraced the cause of peace 
and philanthropy for the sole end and satisfac- 
tion of being plundered and slain. A man does 
not come the length of the spirit of martyrdom 
without some active purpose, some equal mo- 
tive, some flaming love. If you have a nation 
of men who have risen to that height of moral 
cultivation that they will not declare war or 
carry arms, for they have not so much madness 
left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers. 



WAR 169 

of benefactors, of true, great and able men. Let 
me know more of that nation ; I shall not find 
them defenceless, with idle hands swinging at 
their sides. I shall find them men of love, 
honor and truth ; men of an immense industry ; 
men whose influence is felt to the end of the 
earth ; men whose very look and voice carry the 
sentence of honor and shame ; and all forces 
yield to their energy and persuasion. When- 
ever we see the doctrine of peace embraced by a 
nation, we may be assured it will not be one 
that invites injury ; but one, on the contrary, 
which has a friend in the bottom of the heart of 
every man, even of the violent and the base ; 
one against which no weapon can prosper ; one 
which is looked upon as the asylum of the 
human race and has the tears and the blessings 
of mankind. 

In the second place, as far as it respects 
individual action in difficult and extreme cases, 
I will say, such cases seldom or never occur to 
the good and just man ; nor are we careful 
to say, or even to know, what in such crises is to 
be done. A wise man will never impawn his 
future being and action, and decide beforehand 
what he shall do in a given extreme event. 
Nature and God will instruct him in that hour. 



170 WAR 

The question naturally arises. How is this 
new aspiration of the human mind to be made 
visible and real ? How is it to pass out of 
thoughts into things ? 

Not, certainly, in the first place, in the way of 
routine and mere forms ^ — the universal specific 
of modern politics ; not by organizing a society, 
and going through a course of resolutions and 
public manifestoes, and being thus formally 
accredited to the public and to the civility of 
the newspapers. We have played this game to 
tediousness. In some of our cities they choose 
noted duellists as presidents and officers of anti- 
duelHng societies. Men who love that bloated 
vanity called public opinion think all is well if 
they have once got their bantling through a suf- 
ficient course of speeches and cheerings, of one, 
two, or three public meetings ; as if they could 
do anything : they vote and vote, cry hurrah on 
both sides, no man responsible, no man caring 
a pin. The next season, an Indian war, or an 
aggression on our commerce by Malays ; or the 
party this man votes with have an appropria- 
tion to carry through Congress: instantly he 
wags his head the other way, and cries. Havoc 
and war ! 

This is not to be carried by public opinion. 



WAR 171 

but by private opinion, by private conviction, 
by private, dear and earnest love. For the only 
hope of this cause is in the increased insight, 
and it is to be accomplished by the spontaneous 
teaching, of the cultivated soul, in its secret 
experience and meditation, — that it is now time 
that it should pass out of the state of beast 
into the state of man ; it is to hear the voice of 
God, which bids the devils that have rended and 
torn him come out of him and let him now 
be clothed and walk forth in his right mind. 

Nor, in the next place, is the peace principle 
to be carried into effect by fear. It can never 
be defended, it can never be executed, by cow- 
ards. Everything great must be done in the 
spirit of greatness. The manhood that has been 
in war must be transferred to the cause of peace, 
before war can lose its charm, and peace be ven- 
erable to men. 

The attractiveness of war shows one thing 
through all the throats of artillery, the thunders 
of so many sieges, the sack of towns, the jousts 
of chivalry, the shock of hosts, — this namely, 
the conviction of man universally, that a man 
should be himself responsible, with goods, 
health and life, for his behavior ; that he should 
not ask of the state protection ; should ask 



172 WAR 

nothing of the state ; should be himself a king- 
dom and a state ; fearing no man ; quite willing 
to use the opportunities and advantages that 
good government throw in his way, but no- 
thing daunted, and not really the poorer if 
government, law and order went by the board; 
because in himself reside infinite resources ; 
because he is sure of himself, and never needs 
to ask another what in any crisis it behooves 
him to do.' 

What makes to us the attractiveness of the 
Greek heroes ? of the Roman ? What makes 
the attractiveness of that romantic style of living 
which is the material of ten thousand plays 
and romances, from Shakspeare to Scott ; the 
feudal baron, the French, the English nobility, 
the Warwicks, Plantagenets ? It is their abso- 
lute self-dependence. 1 do not wonder at the 
dislike some of the friends of peace have ex- 
pressed at Shakspeare. The veriest churl and 
Jacobin cannot resist the influence of the style 
and manners of these haughty lords. We are 
affected, as boys and barbarians are, by the 
appearance of a few rich and wilful gentlemen 
who take their honor into their own keeping, 
defy the world, so confident are they of their 
courage and strength, and whose appearance 



WAR 173 

is the arrival of so much life and virtue. In 
dangerous times they are presently tried, and 
therefore their name is a flourish of trumpets. 
They, at least, affect us as a reality. They are 
not shams, but the substance of which that age 
and world is made. They are true heroes for 
their time. They make what is in their minds 
the greatest sacrifice. They will, for an injuri- 
ous word, peril all their state and wealth, and 
go to the field. Take away that principle of 
responsibleness, and they become pirates and 
ruffians.' 

This self-subsistency is the charm of war ; for 
this self-subsistency is essential to our idea of 
man. But another age comes, a truer religion 
and ethics open, and a man puts himself under 
the dominion of principles. I see him to be the 
servant of truth, of love and of freedom, and 
immovable in the waves of the crowd. The 
man of principle, that is, the man who, without 
any flourish of trumpets, titles of lordship or 
train of guards, without any notice of his action 
abroad, expecting none, takes in solitude the 
right step uniformly, on his private choice and 
disdaining consequences, — does not yield, in 
my imagination, to any man. He is willing to 
be hanged at his own gate, rather than consent 



174 WAR 

to any compromise of his freedom or the sup- 
pression of his conviction. I regard no longer 
those names that so tingled in my ear. This 
is a baron of a better nobility and a stouter 
stomach. 

The cause of peace is not the cause of coward- 
ice. If peace is sought to be defended or pre- 
served for the safety of the luxurious and the 
timid, it is a sham, and the peace will be base. 
War is better, and the peace will be broken. If 
peace is to be maintained, it must be by brave 
men, who have come up to the same height as 
the hero, namely, the will to carry their life in 
their hand, and stake it at any instant for their 
principle, but who have gone one step beyond 
the hero, and will not seek another man's life ; 
— men who have, by their intellectual insight 
or else by their moral elevation, attained such 
a perception of their own intrinsic worth that 
they do not think property or their own body 
a sufficient good to be saved by such dereliction 
of principle as treating a man like a sheep. 

If the universal cry for reform of so many 
inveterate abuses, with which society rings, — if 
the desire of a large class of young men for a faith 
and hope, intellectual and religious, such as they 
have not yet found, be an omen to be trusted ; 



WAR 175 

if the disposition to rely more, in study and in 
action, on the unexplored riches of the human 
constitution, — if the search of the sublime laws 
of morals and the sources of hope and trust, in 
man, and not in books, in the present, and not 
in the past, proceed ; if the rising generation 
can be provoked to think it unworthy to nestle 
into every abomination of the past, and shall 
feel the generous darings of austerity and virtue, 
then war has a short day, and human blood will 
cease to flow. 

It is of little consequence in what manner, 
through what organs, this purpose of mercy and 
holiness is effected. The proposition of the Con- 
gress of Nations is undoubtedly that at which 
the present fabric of our society and the present 
course of events do point. But the mind, once 
prepared for the reign of principles, will easily find 
modes of expressing its will. There is the high- 
est fitness in the place and time in which this 
enterprise is begun. Not in an obscure corner, 
not in a feudal Europe, not in an antiquated 
appanage where no onward step can be taken 
without rebellion, is this seed of benevolence 
laid in the furrow, with tears of hope ; but 
in this broad America of God and man, where 
the forest is only now falling, or yet to fall, and 



176 WAR 

the green earth opened to the inundation of 
emigrant men from all quarters of oppression 
and guilt ; here, where not a family, not a few 
men, but mankind, shall say what shall be ; 
here, we ask, Shall it be War, or shall it be 
Peace ? 



VI 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

ADDRESS TO CITIZENS OF CONCORD 
3 MAY, 1851 



The Eternal Rights/ 
Victors over daily wrongs: 
Awfiil victors, they misguide 
Whom they w^ill destroy. 
And their commg triumph hide 
In our downfall, or our joy: 
They reach no term, they never sleep. 
In equal strength through space abide; 
Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep. 
The strong they slay, the swift outstride; 
Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods. 
And rankly on the castled steep, — 
Speak it firmly, these are gods. 
Are all ghosts beside. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

FELLOW CITIZENS: I accepted your 
invitation to speak to you on the great 
question of these days, with very little consider- 
ation of what I might have to offer: for there 
seems to be no option. The last year has forced 
us all into politics, and made it a paramount 
duty to seek what it is often a duty to shun. 
We do not breathe well. There is infamy in 
the air. I have a new experience. I wake in 
the morning with a painful sensation^ which I 
carry about all day, and which, when traced 
home, is the odious remembrance of that igno- 
miny which has fallen on Massachusetts, which 
robs the landscape of beauty, and takes the sun- 
shine out of every hour. I have lived all my 
life in this state, and never had any experience 
of personal inconvenience from the laws, until 
now. They never came near me to any discom- 
fort before. I find the like sensibility in my 
neighbors; and in that class who take no inter- 
est in the ordinary questions of party politics. 
There are men who are as sure indexes of the 
equity of legislation and of the same state of 
public feeling, as the barometer is of the weight 



i8o THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW^ 

of the air, and it is a bad sign when these are 
discontented, for though they snuff oppression 
and dishonor at a distance, it is because they are 
more impressionable : the whole population will 
in a short time be as painfully affected. 

Every hour brings us from distant quarters 
of the Union the expression of mortification 
at the late events in Massachusetts, and at the 
behavior of Boston. The tameness was indeed 
shocking. Boston, of whose fame for spirit and 
character we have all been so proud ; Boston, 
whose citizens, intelligent people in England 
told me they could always distinguish by their 
culture among Americans; the Boston of the 
American Revolution, which figures so proudly 
in John Adams's Diary, which the whole 
country has been reading; Boston, spoiled by 
prosperity, must bow its ancient honor in the 
dust, and make us irretrievably ashamed. In 
Boston, we have said with such lofty confidence, 
no fugitive slave can be arrested, and now, we 
must transfer our vaunt to the country, and say, 
with a little less confidence, no fugitive man 
can be arrested here ; at least we can brag thus 
until to-morrow, when the farmers also may be 
corrupted. 

The tameness is indeed complete. The only 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW i8i 

haste in Boston, after the rescue of Shadrach/ 
last February, was, who should first put his 
name on the list of volunteers in aid of the mar- 
shal. I met the smoothest of Episcopal Clergy- 
men the other day, and allusion being made to 
Mr. Webster*s treachery, he blandly replied, 
" Why, do you know I think that the great 
action of his life." It looked as if in the city 
and the suburbs all were involved in one hot 
haste of terror, — presidents of colleges, and 
professors, saints, and brokers, insurers, law- 
yers, importers, manufacturers : not an un- 
pleasing sentiment, not a liberal recollection, 
not so much as a snatch of an old song for free- 
dom, dares intrude on their passive obedience. 
The panic has paralyzed the journals, with 
the fewest exceptions, so that one cannot open 
a newspaper without being disgusted by new 
records of shame. I cannot read longer even the 
local good news. When I look down the columns 
at the titles of paragraphs, " Education in Massa- 
chusetts," " Board of Trade," " Art Union," 
" Revival of Religion," what bitter mockeries ! 
The very convenience of property, the house and 
land we occupy, have lost their best value, and 
a man looks gloomily at his children, and thinks, 
" What have I done that you should begin life 



i82 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

in dishonor ? " Every liberal study is dis- 
credited, — literature and science appear effem- 
inate, and the hiding of the head. The college, 
the churches, the schools, the very shops and 
factories are discredited ; real estate, every kind 
of wealth, every branch of industry, every avenue 
to power, suffers injury, and the value of life is 
reduced. Just now a friend came into my house 
and said, " If this law shall be repealed I shall 
be glad that I have lived ; if not I shall be sorry 
that I was born." What kind of law is that 
which extorts language like this from the heart 
of a free and civilized people ? 

One intellectual benefit we owe to the late 
disgraces. The crisis had the illuminating power 
of a sheet of lightning at midnight. It showed 
truth. It ended a good deal of nonsense we had 
been wont to hear and to repeat, on the 19th of 
April, the 17th of June, the 4th of July. It 
showed the slightness and unreliableness of our 
social fabric, it showed what stuff reputations are 
made of, what straws we dignify by office and 
title, and how competent we are to give counsel 
and help in a day of trial. It showed the shal- 
lowness of leaders ; the divergence of parties 
from their alleged grounds ; showed that men 
would not stick to what they had said, that the 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 183 

resolutions of public bodies, or the pledges never 
so often given and put on record of public men, 
will not bind them. The fact comes out more 
plainly that you cannot rely on any man for the 
defence of truth, who is not constitutionally or 
by blood and temperament on that side. A man 
of a greedy and unscrupulous selfishness may 
maintain morals when they are in fashion: but 
he will not stick. However close Mr. Wolf's 
nails have been pared, however neatly he has 
been shaved, and tailored, and set up on end, 
and taught to say, " Virtue and Religion," he 
cannot be relied on at a pinch : he will say, 
moraUty means pricking a vein. The popular 
assumption that all men loved freedom, and 
believed in the Christian religion, was found 
hollow American brag ; only persons who were 
known and tried benefactors are found standing 
for freedom : the sentimentalists went down- 
stream.' I question the value of our civilization, 
when I see that the public mind had never less 
hold of the strongest of all truths. The sense 
of injustice is blunted, — a sure sign of the 
shallowness of our intellect. I cannot accept the 
railroad and telegraph in exchange for reason 
and charity. It is not skill in iron locomotives 
that makes so fine civility, as the jealousy of 



184 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

liberty. I cannot think the most judicious 
tubing a compensation for metaphysical debility. 
What is the use of admirable law-forms, and 
political forms, if a hurricane of party feeling 
and a combination of monied interests can beat 
them to the ground ? What is the use of courts, 
if judges only quote authorities, and no judge 
exerts original jurisdiction, or recurs to first 
principles ? What is the use of a Federal Bench, 
if its opinions are the political breath of the 
hour ? And what is the use of constitutions, if 
all the guaranties provided by the jealousy of 
ages for the protection of liberty are made of no 
effect, when a bad act of Congress finds a will- 
ing commissioner? The levity of the public 
mind has been shown in the past year by the 
most extravagant actions. Who could have be- 
lieved it, if foretold that a hundred guns would 
be fired in Boston on the passage of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Bill ? Nothing proves the want of 
all thought, the absence of standard in men's 
minds, more than the dominion of party. Here 
are humane people who have tears for misery, 
an open purse for want ; who should have been 
the defenders of the poor man, are found his 
embittered enemies, rejoicing in his rendition, 
— merely from party ties. I thought none, that 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 185 

was not ready to go on all fours, would back 
this law. And yet here are upright men, com- 
potes mentis y husbands, fathers, trustees, friends, 
open, generous, brave, who can see nothing in 
this claim for bare humanity, and the health and 
honor of their native State, but canting fanati- 
cism, sedition and " one idea." Because of 
this preoccupied mind, the whole wealth and 
power of Boston — two hundred thousand souls, 
and one hundred and eighty millions of money 
— are thrown into the scale of crime : and the 
poor black boy, whom the fame of Boston had 
reached in the recesses of a vile swamp, or in 
the alleys of Savannah, on arriving here finds 
all this force employed to catch him. The 
famous town of Boston is his master's hound. 
The learning of the universities, the culture 
of elegant society, the acumen of lawyers, 
the majesty of the Bench, the eloquence of the 
Christian pulpit, the stoutness of Democracy, 
the respectability of the Whig party are all 
combined to kidnap him. 

The crisis is interesting as it shows the self- 
protecting nature of the world and of the Divine 
laws. It is the law of the world, — as much 
immorality as there is, so much misery. The 
greatest prosperity will in vain resist the greatest 



i86 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

calamity. You borrow the succour of the devil 
and he must have his fee. He was never known 
to abate a penny of his rents. In every nation 
all the immorality that exists breeds plagues. 
But of the corrupt society that exists we have 
never been able to combine any pure prosper- 
ity. There is always something in the very 
advantages of a condition which hurts it. Africa 
has its malformation ; England has its Ireland ; 
Germany its hatred of classes ; France its love 
of gunpowder ; Italy its Pope ; and America, 
the most prosperous country in the Universe, 
has the greatest calamity in the Universe, negro 
slavery. 

Let me remind you a little in detail how the 
natural retribution acts in reference to the statute 
which Congress passed a year ago. For these 
few months have shown very conspicuously its 
nature and impracticability. It is contravened: 

I. By the sentiment of duty. An immoral 
law makes it a man's duty to break it, at every 
hazard. For virtue is the very self of every 
man. It is therefore a principle of law that an 
immoral contract is void, and that an immoral 
statute is void. For, as laws do not make 
right, and are simply declaratory of a right 
which already existed, it is not to be presumed 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 187 

that they can so stultify themselves as to com- 
mand injustice. 

It is remarkable how rare in the history of 
tyrants is an immoral law. Some color, some 
indirection was always used. If you take up the 
volumes of the " Universal History," you will 
find it difficult searching. The precedents are 
few. It is not easy to parallel the wickedness 
of this American law. And that is the head 
and body of this discontent, that the law is 
immoral. 

Here is a statute which enacts the crime of 
kidnapping, — a crime on one footing with 
arson and murder. A man's right to liberty is 
as inalienable as his right to life. 

Pains seem to have been taken to give us in 
this statute a wrong pure from any mixture of 
right. If our resistance to this law is not right, 
there is no right. This is not meddling with 
other people's affairs : this is hindering other 
people from meddling with us. This is not 
going crusading into Virginia and Georgia after 
slaves, who, it is alleged, are very comfortable 
where they are : — that amiable argument falls 
to the ground : but this is befriending in our 
own State, on our own farms, a man who has 
taken the risk of being shot, or burned alive, or 



i88 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

cast into the sea, or starved to death, or suffo- 
cated in a wooden box, to get away from his 
driver : and this man who has run the gauntlet 
of a thousand miles for his freedom, the statute 
says, you men of Massachusetts shall hunt, and 
catch, and send back again to the dog-hutch he 
fled from. 

It is contrary to the primal sentiment of duty, 
and therefore all men that are born are, in pro- 
portion to their power of thought and their 
moral sensibility, found to be the natural ene- 
mies of this law. The resistance of all moral 
beings is secured to it. I had thought, I con- 
fess, what must come at last would come at 
first, a banding of all men against the authority 
of this statute. I thought it a point on which 
all sane men were agreed, that the law must re- 
spect the public morality. I thought that all 
men of all conditions had been made sharers 
of a certain experience, that in certain rare and 
retired moments they had been made to see 
how man is man, or what makes the essence of 
rational beings, namely, that whilst animals have 
to do with eating the fruits of the ground, 
men have to do with rectitude, with benefit, 
with truth, with something which /V, independent 
of appearances : and that this tie makes the 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAV^ 189 

substantiality of life, this, and not their plough- 
ing, or sailing, their trade or the breeding of 
families. I thought that every time a man goes 
back to his own thoughts, these angels receive 
him, talk with him, and that, in the best hours, 
he is uplifted in virtue of this essence, into a 
peace and into a power which the material world 
cannot give : that these moments counterbalance 
the years of drudgery, and that this owning of 
a law, be it called morals, religion, or godhead, 
or what you will, constituted the explanation of 
life, the excuse and indemnity for the errors 
and calamities which sadden it. In long years 
consumed in trifles, they remember these mo- 
ments, and are consoled. I thought it was this 
fair mystery, whose foundations are hidden in 
eternity, which made the basis of human soci- 
ety, and of law ; and that to pretend anything 
else, as that the acquisition of property was 
the end of living, was to confound all distinc- 
tions, to make the world a greasy hotel, and, 
instead of noble motives and inspirations, and 
a heaven of companions and angels around and 
before us, to leave us in a grimacing menagerie 
of monkeys and idiots. All arts, customs, socie- 
ties, books, and laws, are good as they foster and 
concur with this spiritual element : all men are 



190 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

beloved as they raise us to it ; hateful as they 
deny or resist it. The laws especially draw their 
obligation only from their concurrence with it. 

I am surprised that lawyers can be so blind as 
to suffer the principles of Law to be discredited. 
A few months ago, in my dismay at hearing 
that the Higher Law was reckoned a good joke 
in the courts, I took pains to look into a few 
law-books. I had often heard that the Bible 
constituted a part of every technical law library, 
and that it was a principle in law that immoral 
laws are void. 

I found, accordingly, that the great jurists, 
Cicero, Grotius, Coke, Blackstone, Burlamaqui, 
Montesquieu, Vattel, Burke, Mackintosh, Jef- 
ferson, do all affirm this. I have no inten- 
tion to recite these passages I had marked : 
— such citation indeed seems to be some- 
thing cowardly (for no reasonable person needs 
a quotation from Blackstone to convince him 
that white cannot be legislated to be black), 
and shall content myself with reading a single 
passage. Blackstone admits the sovereignty 
"antecedent to any positive precept, of the 
law of Nature," among whose principles are, 
" that we should live on, should hurt nobody, 
and should render unto every one his due," 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 191 

etc. " No human laws are of any validity^ if con- 
trary to thisT "Nay, if any human law should 
allow or enjoin us to commit a crime" (his 
instance is murder), " we are bound to trans- 
gress that human law ; or else we must offend 
both the natural and divine." Lord Coke held 
that where an Act of Parliament is against 
common right and reason, the common law shall 
control it, and adjudge it to he void. Chief 
Justice Hobart, Chief Justice Holt, and Chief 
Justice Mansfield held the same. 

Lord Mansfield, in the case of the slave 
Somerset, wherein the dicta of Lords Talbot 
and Hardwicke had been cited, to the effect 
of carrying back the slave to the W^est Indies, 
said, " I care not for the supposed dicta of 
judges, however eminent, if they be contrary 
to all principle." Even the Canon Law says 
(in malis promissis non expedit servare fidem)^ 
"Neither allegiance nor oath can bind to obey 
that which is wrong." 

No engagement (to a sovereign) can oblige 
or even authorize a man to violate the laws of 
Nature. All authors who have any conscience 
or modesty agree that a person ought not to 
obey such commands as are evidently contrary 
to the laws of God. Those governors of places 



192 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

who bravely refused to execute the barbarous 
orders of Charles IX. for the famous "Mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew," have been universally 
praised ; and the court did not dare to punish 
them, at least openly. " Sire," said the brave 
Orte, governor of Bayonne, in his letter, " I 
have communicated your majesty's command 
to your faithful inhabitants and warriors in the 
garrison, and I have found there only good citi- 
zens, and brave soldiers ; not one hangman : 
therefore, both they and I must humbly entreat 
your majesty to be pleased to employ your arms 
and lives in things that are possible, however 
hazardous they may be, and we will exert 
ourselves to the last drop of our blood." ' 

The practitioners should guard this dogma 
well, as the palladium of the profession, as their 
anchor in the respect of mankind. Against a 
principle like this, all the arguments of Mr. 
Webster are the spray of a child's squirt against 
a granite wall. 

2. It is contravened by all the sentiments. 
How can a law be enforced that fines pity, and 
imprisons charity ? As long as men have bowels, 
they will disobey. You know that the Act of 
Congress of September i8, 1850, is a law which 
every one of you will break on the earliest occa- 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 193 

slon. There is not a manly Whig, or a manly- 
Democrat, of whom, if a slave were hidden in 
one of our houses from the hounds, we should 
not ask with confidence to lend his wagon in 
aid of his escape, and he would lend it. The 
man would be too strong for the partisan. 

And here I may say that it is absurd, what I 
often hear, to accuse the friends of freedom in 
the North with being the occasion of the new 
stringency of the Southern slave-laws. If you 
starve or beat the orphan, in my presence, and 
I accuse your cruelty, can I help it? In the 
words of Electra in the Greek tragedy, " 'T is 
you that say it, not I. You do the deeds, and 
your ungodly deeds find me the words." Will 
you blame the ball for rebounding from the floor, 
blame the air for rushing in where a vacuum is 
made or the boiler for exploding under pressure 
of steam ? These facts are after laws of the 
world, and so is it law, that, when justice is 
violated, anger begins. The very defence which 
the God of Nature has provided for the inno- 
cent against cruelty is the sentiment of indigna- 
tion and pity in the bosom of the beholder. 
Mr. Webster tells the President that " he has 
been in the North, and he has found no man, 
whose opinion is of any weight, who is opposed 



194 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

to the law." Oh, Mr. President, trust not the 
information ! The gravid old Universe goes 
spawning on ; the womb conceives and the 
breasts give suck to thousands and millions of 
hairy babes formed not in the image of your 
statute, but in the image of the Universe ; too 
many to be bought off; too many than they 
can be rich, and therefore peaceable ; and ne- 
cessitated to express first or last every feeling 
of the heart. You can keep no secret, for what- 
ever is true some of them will unreasonably 
say. You can commit no crime, for they are 
created in their sentiments conscious of and 
hostile to it ; and unless you can suppress the 
newspaper, pass a law against book-shops, gag 
the English tongue in America, all short of this 
is futile. This dreadful English Speech is sat- 
urated with songs, proverbs and speeches that 
flatly contradict and defy every line of Mr. 
Mason's statute. Nay, unless you can draw a 
sponge over those seditious Ten Command- 
ments which are the root of our European and 
American civilization ; and over that eleventh 
commandment, " Do unto others as you would 
have them do to you," your labor is vain. 

3. It is contravened by the written laws 
themselves, because the sentiments, of course. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAVVT 195 

write the statutes. Laws are merely declaratory 
of the natural sentiments of mankind, and the 
language of all permanent laws will be in con- 
tradiction to any immoral enactment. And thus 
it happens here : Statute fights against Statute. 
By the law of Congress March 2, 1807, ^^ i^ 
piracy and murder, punishable with death, to 
enslave a man on the coast of Africa. By law 
of Congress September, 1850, it is a high crime 
and misdemeanor, punishable with fine and 
imprisonment, to resist the reenslaving a man 
on the coast of America. Off soundings, it is 
piracy and murder to enslave him. On sound- 
ings, it is fine and prison not to reenslave. 
What kind of legislation is this ? What kind 
of constitution which covers it ? And yet the 
crime which the second law ordains is greater 
than the crime which the first law forbids under 
penalty of the gibbet. For it is a greater crime 
to reenslave a man who has shown himself fit 
for freedom, than to enslave him at first, when 
it might be pretended to be a mitigation of his 
lot as a captive in war. 

4. It is contravened by the mischiefs it oper- 
ates. A wicked law cannot be executed by good 
men, and must be by bad. Flagitious men 
must be employed, and every act of theirs is a 



196 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

stab at the public peace. It cannot be executed 
at such a cost, and so it brings a bribe in its 
hand. This law comes with infamy in it, and 
out of it. It offers a bribe in its own clauses 
for the consummation of the crime. To serve 
it, low and mean people are found by the grop- 
ing of the government. No government ever 
found it hard to pick up tools for base actions. 
If you cannot find them in the huts of the poor, 
you shall find them in the palaces of the rich. 
Vanity can buy some, ambition others, and 
money others. The first execution of the law, 
as was inevitable, was a little hesitating ; the 
second was easier; and the glib officials became, 
in a few weeks, quite practised and handy at 
stealing men. But worse, not the officials alone 
are bribed, but the whole community is solicited. 
The scowl of the community is attempted to 
be averted by the mischievous whisper, " Tariff 
and Southern market, if you will be quiet: no 
tariff and loss of Southern market, if you dare 
to murmur." I wonder that our acute people 
who have learned that the cheapest police is dear 
schools, should not find out that an immoral 
law costs more than the loss of the custom of 
a Southern city. 

The humiliating scandal of great men warp- 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 197 

ing right into wrong was followed up very fast 
by the cities. New York advertised in South- 
ern markets that it would go for slavery, and 
posted the names of merchants who would 
not. Boston, alarmed, entered into the same 
design. Philadelphia, more fortunate, had no 
conscience at all, and, in this auction of the 
rights of mankind, rescinded all its legislation 
against slavery. And the Boston " Advertiser," 
and the " Courier," in these weeks, urge the 
same course on the people of Massachusetts. 
Nothing remains in this race of roguery but to 
coax Connecticut or Maine to outbid us all by 
adopting slavery into its constitution. 

Great is the mischief of a legal crime. Every 
person who touches this business is contami- 
nated. There has not been in our lifetime another 
moment when public men were personally low- 
ered by their political action. But here are 
gentlemen whose believed probity was the con- 
fidence and fortification of multitudes, who, by 
fear of public opinion, or through the danger- 
ous ascendency of Southern manners, have been 
drawn into the support of this foul business. 
We poor men in the country who might once 
have thought it an honor to shake hands with 
them, or to dine at their boards, would now 



198 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

shrink from their touch, nor could they enter 
our humblest doors. You have a law which no 
man can obey, or abet the obeying, without loss 
of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of 
gentleman. What shall we say of the function- 
ary by whom the recent rendition was made ? 
If he has rightly defined his powers, and has 
no authority to try the case, but only to prove 
the prisoner's identity, and remand him, what 
office is this for a reputable citizen to hold ? 
No man of honor can sit on that bench. It is 
the extension of the planter's whipping-post ; 
and its incumbents must rank with a class 
from which the turnkey, the hangman and the 
informer are taken, necessary functionaries, it 
may be, in a state, but to whom the dislike and 
the ban of society universally attaches. 

5. These resistances appear in the history of 
the statute, in the retributions which speak so 
loud in every part of this business, that I think 
a tragic poet will know how to make it a les- 
son for all ages. Mr. Webster's measure was, 
he told us, final. It was a pacification, it was a 
suppression, a measure of conciliation and ad- 
justment. These were his words at different 
times : " there was to be no parleying more ; " 
it was " irrepealable." Does it look final now? 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 199 

His final settlement has dislocated the founda- 
tions. The state-house shakes likes a tent. His 
pacification has brought all the honesty in every 
house, all scrupulous and good-hearted men, all 
women, and all children, to accuse the law. It 
has brought United States swords into the 
streets, and chains round the court-house. " A 
measure of pacification and union." What is 
its effect? To make one sole subject for con- 
versation and painful thought throughout the 
continent, namely, slavery. There is not a man 
of thought or of feeling but is concentrating 
his mind on it. There is not a clerk but recites 
its statistics ; not a politician but is watching its 
incalculable energy in the elections ; not a jurist 
but is hunting up precedents ; not a moraHst 
but is prying into its quality ; not an econo- 
mist but is computing its profit and loss : Mr. 
Webster can judge whether this sort of solar 
microscope brought to bear on his law is likely 
to make opposition less. The only benefit that 
has accrued from the law is its service to educa- 
tion. It has been like a university to the entire 
people. It has turned every dinner-table into a 
debating-club, and made every citizen a student 
of natural law. When a moral quality comes 
into politics, when a right is invaded, the discus- 



200 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

sion draws on deeper sources : general principles 
are laid bare, which cast light on the whole 
frame of society. And it is cheering to behold 
what champions the emergency called to this 
poor black boy ; what subtlety, what logic, what 
learning, what exposure of the mischief of the 
law ; and, above all, with what earnestness and 
dignity the advocates of freedom were inspired. 
It was one of the best compensations of this 
calamity. 

But the Nemesis works underneath again. It 
is a power that makes noonday dark, and draws 
us on to our undoing ; and its dismal way is to 
pillory the offender in the moment of his tri- 
umph. The hands that put the chain on the 
slave are in that moment manacled. Who has 
seen anything like that which is now done ? The 
words of John Randolph, wiser than he knew, 
have been ringing ominously in all echoes for 
thirty years, words spoken in the heat of the 
Missouri debate. " We do not govern the people 
of the North by our black slaves, but by their 
own white slaves. We know what we are doing. 
We have conquered you once, and we can and 
will conquer you again. Ay, we will drive you 
to the wall, and when we have you there once 
more, we will keep you there and nail you down 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 201 

like base money." These words resounding 
ever since from California to Oregon, from Cape 
Florida to Cape Cod, come down now like the 
cry of Fate, in the moment when they are ful- 
filled. By white slaves, by a white slave, are we 
beaten.' Who looked for such ghastly fulfil- 
ment, or to see what we see ? Hills and Halletts, 
servile editors by the hundred, we could have 
spared. But him, our best and proudest, the 
first man of the North, in the very moment of 
mounting the throne, irresistibly taking the bit 
in his mouth and the collar on his neck, and har- 
nessing himself to the chariot of the planters. 

The fairest American fame ends in this filthy 
law. Mr. Webster cannot choose" but regret 
his law. He must learn that those who make 
fame accuse him with one voice ; that those who 
have no points to carry that are not identical 
with public morals and generous civilization, 
that the obscure and private who have no voice 
and care for none, so long as things go well, 
but who feel the disgrace of the new legislation 
creeping like miasma into their homes, and blot- 
ting the daylight, — those to whom his name 
was once dear and honored, as the manly states- 
man to whom the choicest gifts of Nature had 
been accorded, disown him : that he who was 



202 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

their pride in the woods and mountains of New 
England is now their mortification, — they have 
torn down his picture from the wall, they have 
thrust his speeches into the chimney* No roars 
of New York mobs can drown this voice in Mr. 
Webster's ear. It will outwhisper all the salvos 
of the "Union Committees'" cannon. But I 
have said too much on this painful topic. I will 
not pursue that bitter history.' 

But passing from the ethical to the political 
view, I wish to place this statute, and we must 
use the introducer and substantial author of the 
bill as an illustration of the history. I have 
as much charity for Mr. Webster, I think, as 
any one has. I need not say how much I have 
enjoyed his fame. Who has not helped to praise 
him ? Simply he was the one eminent Amer- 
ican of our time, whom we could produce as a 
finished work of Nature. We delighted in his 
form and face, in his voice, in his eloquence, 
in his power of labor, in his concentration, in 
his large understanding, in his daylight state- 
ment, simple force ; the facts lay like the strata 
of a cloud, or like the layers of the crust of 
the globe. He saw things as they were, and 
he stated them so. He has been by his clear 
perceptions and statements in all these years 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 203 

the best head in Congress, and the champion 
of the interests of the Northern seaboard : but 
as the activity and growth of slavery began to be 
offensively felt by his constituents, the senator 
became less sensitive to these evils. They were 
not for him to deal with : he was the commer- 
cial representative. He indulged occasionally 
in excellent expression of the known feeling of 
the New England people : but, when expected 
and when pledged, he omitted to speak, and 
he omitted to throw himself into the movement 
in those critical moments when his leadership 
would have turned the scale. At last, at a fatal 
hour, this sluggishness accumulated to down- 
right counteraction, and, very unexpectedly to 
the whole Union, on the yth March, 1850, in 
opposition to his education, association, and to 
all his own most explicit language for thirty 
years, he crossed the line, and became the head 
of the slavery party in this country. 

Mr. Webster perhaps is only following the 
laws of his blood and constitution. I suppose 
his pledges were not quite natural to him. Mr. 
Webster is a man who lives by his memory, a 
man of the past, not a man of faith or of hope. 
He obeys his powerful animal nature; — and 
his finely developed understanding only works 



204 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

truly and with all its force, when it stands for 
animal good; that is, for property. He believes, 
in so many words, that government exists for the 
protection of property. He looks at the Union 
as an estate, a large farm, and is excellent in 
the completeness of his defence of it so far. He 
adheres to the letter. Happily he was born 
late, — after the independence had been de- 
clared, the Union agreed to, and the constitu- 
tion settled. What he finds already written, he 
will defend. Lucky that so much had got well 
written when he came. For he has no faith in 
the power of self-government ; none whatever 
in extemporizing a government. Not the small- 
est municipal provision, if it were new, would 
receive his sanction. In Massachusetts, in 1776, 
he would, beyond all question, have been a 
refugee. He praises Adams and Jefferson, but 
it is a past Adams and Jefferson that his mind 
can entertain.' A present Adams and Jefferson 
he would denounce. So with the eulogies of 
liberty in his writings, — they are sentimentalism 
and youthful rhetoric. He can celebrate it, but 
it means as much from him as from Metternich 
or Talleyrand. This is all inevitable from his 
/ constitution. All the drops of his blood have 
eyes that look downward. It is neither praise 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 205 

nor blame to say that he has no moral percep- 
tion, no moral sentiment, but in that region — 
to use the phrase of the phrenologists — a 
hole in the head. The scraps of morality to be 
gleaned from his speeches are reflections of the 
mind of others ; he says what he hears said, 
but often makes signal blunders in their use. In_ 
Mr. Webster's imagination the American Union 
was a huge Prince Rupert's drop, which, if so 
much as the smallest end be shivered off, the 
whole will snap into atoms. Now the fact is 
quite different from this. The people are loyal, 
law-loving, law-abiding. They prefer order, and 
have no taste for misrule and uproar. 

The destiny of this country is great and lib- 
eral, and is to be greatly administered. It is to 
be administered according to what is, and is 
to be, and not according to what is dead and 
gone. The union of this people is a real thing, 
an alliance of men of one flock, one language, 
one religion, one system of manners and ideas. 
I hold it to be a real and not a statute union. 
The people cleave to the Union, because they 
see their advantage in it, the added power of 
each. 

I suppose the Union can be left to take care 
of itself As much real union as there is, the 



2o6 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

statutes will be sure to express ; as much disunion 
as there is, no statute can long conceal. Under 
the Union I suppose the fact to be that there 
are really two nations, the North and the 
South. It Is not slavery that severs them, it is 
climate and temperament. The South does not 
like the North, slavery or no slavery, and never 
did. The North likes the South well enough, 
for it knows its own advantages. I am willing 
to leave them to the facts. If they continue to 
have a binding interest, they will be pretty sure 
to find it out: if not, they will consult their 
peace in parting. But one thing appears certain 
to me, that, as soon as the constitution ordains 
an immoral law, it ordains disunion. The law is 
suicidal, and cannot be obeyed. The Union is 
at an end as soon as an immoral law is enacted. 
And he who writes a crime into the statute- 
book digs under the foundations of the Capitol 
to plant there a powder-magazine, and lays a 
train. 

I pass to say a few words to the question, 
What shall we do ? 

1. What in our federal capacity is our rela- 
tion to the nation ? 

2. And what as citizens of a state? 

' I am an Unionist as we all are, or nearly all, 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAV^ 207 

and I strongly share the hope of mankind in 
the power, and therefore, in the duties of the 
Union; and I conceive it demonstrated, — the 
necessity of common sense and justice entering 
into the laws. What shall we do ? First, ab- 
rogate this law ; then, proceed to confine slavery 
to slave states, and help them effectually to 
make an end of it. Or shall we, as we are ad- 
vised on all hands, lie by, and wait the progress 
of the census ? But will Slavery lie by ? I fear 
not. She is very industrious, gives herself no 
holidays. No proclamations will put her down. 
She got Texas and now will have Cuba, and 
means to keep her majority. The experience 
of the past gives us no encouragement to lie 
by. Shall we call a new Convention, or will 
any expert statesman furnish us a plan for the 
summary or gradual winding up of slavery, so 
far as the Republic is its patron ? Where is the 
South itself? Since it is agreed by all sane men 
of all parties (or was yesterday) that slavery is 
mischievous, why does the South itself never 
offer the smallest counsel of her own ? I have 
never heard in twenty years any project except 
Mr. Clay*s. Let us hear any project with can- 
dor and respect. Is it impossible to speak of 
it with reason and good nature ? It is really 



2o8 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

the project fit for this country to entertain and 
accomplish. Everything invites emancipation. 
The grandeur of the design, the vast stake we 
hold ; the national domain, the new importance 
of Liberia ; the manifest interest of the slave 
states ; the religious effort of the free states ; 
the pubHc opinion of the world ; — ail join to 
demand it. 

We shall one day bring the States shoul- 
der to shoulder and the citizens man to man 
to exterminate slavery. Why in the name of 
common sense and the peace of mankind is 
not this made the subject of instant negotiation 
and settlement? Why not end this dangerous 
dispute on some ground of fair compensation 
on one side, and satisfaction on the other to the 
conscience of the free states ? It is really the 
great task fit for this country to accomplish, to 
buy that property of the planters, as the British 
nation bought the West Indian slaves. I say 
buy, — never conceding the right of the planter 
to own, but that we may acknowledge the 
calamity of his position, and bear a countryman's 
share in relieving him ; and because it is the 
only practicable course, and is innocent. Here 
is a right social or public function, which one 
man cannot do, which all men must do. 'Tis 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 209 

said it will cost two thousand millions of dollars. 
W^as there ever any contribution that was so en- 
thusiastically paid as this will be ? We will have 
a chimney-tax. We will give up our coaches, 
and wine, and watches. The churches will melt 
their plate. The father of his country shall wait, 
well pleased, a little longer for his monument ; 
Franklin for his, the Pilgrim Fathers for theirs, 
and the patient Columbus for his. The me- 
chanics will give, the needle-women will give ; 
the children will have cent-societies. Every man 
in the land will give a week's work to dig away 
this accursed mountain of sorrow once and for- 
ever out of the world." 

Nothing is impracticable to this nation, which 
it shall set itself to do. Were ever men so 
endowed, so placed, so weaponed ? Their power 
of territory seconded by a genius equal to every 
work. By new arts the earth is subdued, roaded, 
tunnelled, telegraphed, gas-lighted ; vast amounts 
of old labor disused ; the sinews of man being 
relieved by sinews of steam. We are on the 
brink of more wonders. The sun paints ; pre- 
sently we shall organize the echo, as now we do 
the shadow. Chemistry is extorting new aids. 
The genius of this people, it is found, can do 
anything which can be done by men. These 

XI 



210 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

thirty nations are equal to any work, and are 
every moment stronger. In twenty-five years 
they will be fifty millions. Is it not time to do 
something besides ditching and draining, and 
making the earth mellow and friable ? Let 
them confront this mountain of poison, — bore, 
blast, excavate, pulverize, and shovel it once 
for all, down into the bottomless Pit. A thou- 
sand millions were cheap. 

But grant that the heart of financiers, accus- 
tomed to practical figures, shrinks within them at 
these colossal amounts, and the embarrassments 
which complicate the problem ; granting that 
these contingencies are too many to be spanned 
by any human geometry, and that these evils 
are to be relieved only by the wisdom of God 
working in ages, — and by what instrument, 
whether Liberia, whether flax-cotton, whether 
the working out this race by Irish and Ger- 
mans, none can tell, or by what sources God 
has guarded his law ; still the question recurs. 
What must we do ? One thing is plain, we 
cannot answer for the Union, but we must 
keep Massachusetts true. It is of unspeakable 
importance that she play her honest part. She 
must follow no vicious examples. Massachusetts 
is a little state : countries have been great by 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 211 

ideas. Europe is little compared with Asia and 
Africa ; yet Asia and Africa are its ox and its 
ass. Europe, the least of all the continents, has 
almost monopolized for twenty centuries the 
genius and power of them all. Greece was the 
least part of Europe. Attica a little part of that, 
— one tenth of the size of Massachusetts. Yet 
that district still rules the intellect of men. 
Judaea was a petty country. Yet these two, 
Greece and Judaea, furnish the mind and the 
heart by which the rest of the world is sus- 
tained; and Massachusetts is little, but, if true 
to itself, can be the brain which turns about 
the behemoth. 

I say Massachusetts, but I mean Massa- 
chusetts in all the quarters of her dispersion ; 
Massachusetts, as she is the mother of all the 
New England states, and as she sees her pro- 
geny scattered over the face of the land, in the 
farthest South, and the uttermost West. The 
immense power of rectitude is apt to be forgot- 
ten in politics. But they who have brought the 
great wrong on the country have not forgotten 
it. They avail themselves of the known probity 
and honor of Massachusetts, to endorse the 
statute. The ancient maxim still holds that 
never was any injustice effected except by the 



212 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

help of justice. The great game of the gov- 
ernment has been to win the sanction of Mas- 
sachusetts to the crime. Hitherto they have 
succeeded only so far as to win Boston to a 
certain extent. The behavior of Boston was the 
reverse of what it should have been : it was 
supple and officious, and it put itself into the 
base attitude of pander to the crime. It should 
have placed obstruction at every step. Let the 
attitude of the states be firm. Let us respect 
the Union to all honest ends. But also respect 
an older and wider union, the law of Nature 
and rectitude. Massachusetts is as strong as the 
Universe, when it does- that. We will never 
intermeddle with your slavery, — but you can 
in no wise be suffered to bring it to Cape Cod 
and Berkshire. This law must be made in- 
operative. It must be abrogated and wiped out 
of the statute-book ; but whilst it stands there, 
it must be disobeyed. We must make a small 
state great, by making every man in it true. 
It was the praise of Athens, " She could not 
lead countless armies into the field, but she 
knew how with a little band to defeat those 
who could.'' Every Roman reckoned himself 
at least a match for a Province. Every Dorian 
did. Every Englishman in Australia, in South 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 213 

Africa, In India, or in whatever barbarous coun- 
try their forts and factories have been set up, — 
represents London, represents the art, power 
and law of Europe. Every man educated at 
the Northern school carries the like advantages 
into the South. For it is confounding distinc- 
tions to speak of the geographic sections of 
this country as of equal civilization. Every na- 
tion and every man bows, in spite of himself, 
to a higher mental and moral existence; and 
the sting of the late disgraces is that this royal 
position of Massachusetts was foully lost, that 
the well-known sentiment of her people was not 
expressed. Let us correct this error. In this 
one fastness let truth be spoken and right done. 
Here let there be no confusion in our ideas. 
Let us not lie, not steal, nor help to steal, and 
let us not call stealing by any fine name, such 
as " Union " or " Patriotism.'* Let us know 
that not by the public, but by ourselves, our 
safety must be bought. That is the secret of 
Southern power, that they rest not on meetings, 
but on private heats and courages. 

It is very certain from the perfect guaranties 
in the constitution, and the high arguments of 
the defenders of liberty, which the occasion 
called out, that there is sufficient margin in the 



214 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

statute and the law for the spirit of the Magis- 
trate to show itself, and one, two, three occasions 
have just now occurred, and past, in either of 
which, if one man had felt the spirit of Coke or 
Mansfield or Parsons, and read the law with the 
eye of freedom, the dishonor of Massachusetts 
had been prevented, and a limit set to these 
encroachments forever. 



VII 
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAM^ 

LECTURE READ IN THE TABERNACLE, NEW YORK CITY 

MARCH 7, 1854, ON THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY 

OF DANIEL WEBSTER'S SPEECH IN FAVOR 

OF THE BILL 

<* Of all we loved and honored, naught 
Save power remains, — 
A fallen angel's pride of thought. 
Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone; from those great eyes 

The soul has fled: 
When faith is lost, when honor dies. 

The man is dead! " 

Whittier, Ichabod! 



' We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him. 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye. 
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents. 

Made him our pattern to live and to die ! 
Shakspeare was of us, Milton was for us. 

Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from their 
graves ! 
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
— He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! ' * 

Browning, The Lost Leader, 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

1DO not often speak to public questions ; 
— they are odious and hurtful, and it seems 
like meddling or leaving your work. I have 
my own spirits in prison ; — spirits in deeper 
prisons, whom no man visits if I do not. And 
then I see what havoc it makes with any good 
mind, a dissipated philanthropy. The one thing 
not to be forgiven to intellectual persons is, not 
to know their own task, or to take their ideas 
from others. From this want of manly rest in 
their own and rash acceptance of other people's 
watchwords come the imbecility and fatigue of 
their conversation. For they cannot affirm these 
from any original experience, and of course not 
with the natural movement and total strength 
of their nature and talent, but only from their 
memory, only from their cramped position of 
standing for their teacher. They say what they 
would have you believe, but what they do not 
quite know.^ 

My own habitual view is to the well-being of 
students or scholars. And it is only when the 
public event affects them, that it very seriously 
touches me. And what I have to say is to 



2i8 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

them. For every man speaks mainly to a class 
whom he works with and more or less fully re- 
presents. It is to these I am beforehand related 
and engaged, in this audience or out of it — to 
them and not to others. And yet, when I say 
the class of scholars or students, — that is a 
class which comprises in some sort all mankind, 
comprises every man in the best hours of his 
life ; and in these days not only virtually but 
actually. For who are the readers and think- 
ers of 1854? Owing to the silent revolution 
which the newspaper has wrought, this class 
has come in this country to take in all classes. 
Look into the morning trains which, from every 
suburb, carry the business men into the city to 
their shops, counting-rooms, work-yards and 
warehouses. With them enters the car — the 
newsboy, that humble priest of politics, finance, 
philosophy, and religion. He unfolds his mag- 
ical sheets, — twopence a head his bread of 
knowledge costs — and instantly the entire rec- 
tangular assembly, fresh from their breakfast, 
are bending as one man to their second break- 
fast. There is, no doubt, chaff enough in what 
he brings ; but there is fact, thought, and wis- 
dom in the crude mass, from all regions of the 
world. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 219 

I have lived all my life without suffering any 
known inconvenience from American Slavery. 
I never saw it ; I never heard the whip ; ' I 
never felt the check on my free speech and ac- 
tion, until, the other day, when Mr. Webster, 
by his personal influence, brought the Fugitive 
Slave Law on the country. I say Mr. Webster, 
for though the Bill was not his, it is yet noto- 
rious that he was the life and soul of it, that 
he gave it all he had : it cost him his life, and 
under the shadow of his great name inferior 
men sheltered themselves, threw their ballots for 
it and made the law. I say inferior men. There 
were all sorts of what are called brilliant men, 
accomplished men, men of high station, a Pre- 
sident of the United States, Senators, men of 
eloquent speech, but men without self-respect, 
without character, and it was strange to see 
that office, age, fame, talent, even a repute for 
honesty, all count for nothing. They had no 
opinions, they had no memory for what they 
had been saying like the Lord's Prayer all their 
lifetime : they were only looking to what their 
great Captain did: if he jumped, they jumped, 
if he stood on his head, they did. In. ordinary, 
the supposed sense of their district and State is 
their guide, and that holds them to the part of 



220 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

liberty and justice. But it is always a little diffi- 
cult to decipher what this public sense is ; and 
when a great man comes who knots up into 
himself the opinions and wishes of the people, 
it is so much easier to follow him as an expo- 
nent of this. He too is responsible ; they will 
not be. It will always suffice to say, — "I fol- 
lowed him." 

I saw plainly that the great show their legiti- 
mate power in nothing more than in their power 
to misguide us. I saw that a great man, deserv- 
edly admired for his powers and their general 
right direction, was able, — fault of the total 
want of stamina in public men, — when he failed, 
to break them all with him, to carry parties with 
him. 

In what I have to say of Mr. Webster I do 
not confound him with vulgar politicians before 
or since. There is always base ambition enough, 
men who calculate on the immense ignorance of 
the masses ; that is their quarry and farm : they 
use the constituencies at home only for their 
shoes. And, of course, they can drive out from 
the contest any honorable man. The low can 
best win the low, and all men like to be made 
much of. There are those too who have power 
and inspiration only to do ill. Their talent or 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAV^ 221 

their faculty deserts them when they undertake 
anything right. Mr. Webster had a natural as- 
cendancy of aspect and carnage which distin- 
guished him over all his contemporaries. His 
countenance, his figure, and his manners were 
all in so grand a style, that he was, without 
effort, as superior to his most eminent rivals as 
they were to the humblest ; so that his arrival 
in any place was an event which drew crowds 
of people, who went to satisfy their eyes, and 
could not see him enough. I think they looked 
at him as the representative of the American 
Continent. He was there in his Adamitic capa- 
city, as if he alone of all men did not disappoint 
the eye and the ear, but was a fit figure in the 
landscape.' 

I remember his appearance at Bunker's Hill. 
There was the Monument, and here was Web- 
ster. He knew well that a little more or less of 
rhetoric signified nothing : he was only to say 
plain and equal things, — grand things if he 
had them, and, if he had them not, only to ab- 
stain from saying unfit things, — and the whole 
occasion was answered by his presence. It was 
a place for behavior more than for speech, and 
Mr. Webster walked through his part with 
entire success. His excellent organization, the 



222 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

perfection of his elocution and all that thereto 
belongs, — voice, accent, intonation, attitude, 
manner, — we shall not soon find again. Then 
he was so thoroughly simple and wise in his 
rhetoric ; he saw through his matter, hugged his 
fact so close, went to the principle or essential, 
and never indulged in a weak flourish, though 
he knew perfectly well how to make such ex- 
ordiums, episodes and perorations as might 
give perspective to his harangues without in the 
least embarrassing his march or confounding 
his transitions. In his statement things lay in 
daylight ; we saw them in order as they were. 
Though he knew very well how to present his 
own personal claims, yet in his argument he was 
intellectual, — stated his fact pure of all person- 
ality, so that his splendid wrath, when his eyes 
became lamps, was the wrath of the fact and 
the cause he stood for. 

His power, like that of all great masters, was 
not in excellent parts, but was total. He had 
a great and everywhere equal propriety. He 
worked with that closeness of adhesion to the 
matter in hand which a joiner or a chemist uses, 
and the same quiet and sure feeling of right to 
his place that an oak or a mountain have to 
theirs. After all his talents have been described. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 223 

there remains that perfect propriety which an- 
imated all the details of the action or speech 
with the character of the whole, so that his 
beauties of detail are endless. He seemed born 
for the bar, born for the senate, and took very 
naturally a leading part in large private and in 
public affairs ; for his head distributed things 
in their right places, and what he saw so well 
he compelled other people to see also. Great 
is the privilege of eloquence. What gratitude 
does every man feel to him who speaks well 
for the right, — who translates truth into lan- 
guage entirely plain and clear ! 

The history of this country has given a dis- 
astrous importance to the defects of this great 
man's mind. W^hether evil influences and the 
corruption of politics, or whether original in- 
firmity, it was the misfortune of his country 
that with this large understanding he had not 
what is better than intellect, and the source of 
its health. It is a law of our nature that great 
thoughts come from the heart. If his moral 
sensibility had been proportioned to the force 
of his understanding, what limits could have 
been set to his genius and beneficent power? 
But he wanted that deep source of inspiration. 
Hence a sterility of thought, the want of gen- 



224 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

eralization in his speeches, and the curious fact 
that, with a general ability which impresses all 
the world, there is not a single general remark, 
not an observation on life and manners, not an 
aphorism that can pass into literature from his 
writings. 

Four years ago to-night, on one of those 
high critical moments in history when great is- 
sues are determined, when the powers of right 
and wrong are mustered for conflict, and it lies 
with one man to give a casting vote, — Mr. 
Webster, most unexpectedly, threw his whole 
weight on the side of Slavery, and caused by 
his personal and official authority the passage 
of the Fugitive Slave Bill. 

It is remarked of the Americans that they 
value dexterity too much, and honor too little ; 
that they think they praise a man more by 
saying that he is " smart " than by saying that 
he is right. Whether the defect be national or 
not, it is the defect and calamity of Mr. Web- 
ster ; and it is so far true of his countrymen, 
namely, that the appeal is sure to be made to 
his physical and mental ability when his char- 
acter is assailed. His speeches on the seventh 
of March, and at Albany, at Buffalo, at Syracuse 
and Boston are cited in justification. And Mr, 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 225 

Webster's literary editor believes that it was his 
wish to rest his fame on the speech of the sev- 
enth of March. Now, though I have my own 
opinions on this seventh of March discourse 
and those others, and think them very trans- 
parent and very open to criticism, — yet the 
secondary merits of a speech, namely, its logic, 
its illustrations, its points, etc., are not here in 
question. Nobody doubts that Daniel Webster 
could make a good speech. Nobody doubts 
that there were good and plausible things to be 
said on the part of the South. But this is not 
a question of ingenuity, not a question of syl- 
logisms, but of sides. How came he there V 

There are always texts and thoughts and 
arguments. But it is the genius and temper 
of the man which decides whether he will stand 
for right or for might. Who doubts the power 
of any fluent debater to defend either of our po- 
litical parties, or any client in our courts ? There 
was the same law in England for Jeffries and 
Talbot and Yorke to read slavery out of, and 
for Lord Mansfield to read freedom. And in 
this country one sees that there is always mar- 
gin enough in the statute for a liberal judge to 
read one way and a servile judge another. 

But the question which History will ask is 



XI 



226 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

broader. In the final hour, when he was forced 
by the peremptory necessity of the closing 
armies to take a side, — did he take the part 
of great principles, the side of humanity and 
justice, or the side of abuse and oppression 
and chaos ? 

Mr. Webster decided for Slavery, and that, 
when the aspect of the institution was no longer 
doubtful, no longer feeble and apologetic and 
proposing soon to end itself, but when it was 
strong, aggressive, and threatening an illimit- 
able increase. He listened to State reasons and 
hopes, and left, with much complacency we are 
told, the testament of his speech to the aston- 
ished State of Massachusetts, vera pro gratis ; 
a ghastly result of all those years of experience 
in affairs, this, that there was nothing better for 
the foremost American man to tell his country- 
men than that Slavery was now at that strength 
that they must beat down their conscience and 
become kidnappers for it. 

This was like the doleful speech falsely 
ascribed to the patriot Brutus: "Virtue, I have 
followed thee through life, and I find thee but a 
shadow." ^ Here was a question of an immoral 
law ; a question agitated for ages, and settled al- 
ways in the same way by every great jurist, that 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 227 

an immoral law cannot be valid. Cicero, Grotius, 
Coke, Blackstone, Burlamaqui, Vattel, Burke, 
Jefferson, do all affirm this, and I cite them, not 
that they can give evidence to what is indisput- 
able, but because, though lawyers and practical 
statesmen, the habit of their profession did not 
hide from them that this truth was the founda- 
tion of States. 

Here was the question, Are you for man and 
for the good of man ; or are you for the hurt and 
harm of man ? It was the question whether man 
shall be treated as leather ? whether the Negro 
shall be, as the Indians were in Spanish America, 
a piece of money ? Whether this system, which 
is a kind of mill or factory for converting men 
into monkeys, shall be upheld and enlarged ? 
And Mr. Webster and the country went for the 
application to these poor men of quadruped law. 

People were expecting a totally different course 
from Mr. Webster. If any man had in that hour 
possessed the weight with the country which he 
had acquired, he could have brought the whole 
country to its senses. But not a moment's pause 
was allowed. Angry parties went from bad to 
worse, and the decision of Webster was accom- 
panied with everything offensive to freedom and 
good morals. There was something like an 



228 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

attempt to debauch the moral sentiment of the 
clergy and of the youth. Burke said he "would 
pardon something to the spirit of liberty." But 
by Mr. Webster the opposition to the law was 
sharply called treason, and prosecuted so. He 
told the people at Boston " they must conquer 
their prejudices ; " that " agitation of the subject 
of Slavery must be suppressed." He did as 
immoral men usually do, made very low bows 
to the Christian Church, and went through all 
the Sunday decorums ; but when allusion was 
made to the question of duty and the sanctions 
of morality, he very frankly said, at Albany, 
" Some higher law, something existing some- 
where between here and the third heaven, — I 
do not know where." And if the reporters say 
true, this wretched atheism found some laughter 
in the company. 

I said I had never in my life up to this time 
suffered from the Slave Institution. Slavery in 
Virginia or Carolina was like Slavery in Africa 
or the Feejees, for me. There was an old fugi- 
tive law, but it had become, or was fast becom- 
ing, a dead letter, and, by the genius and laws of 
Massachusetts, inoperative. The new Bill made 
it operative, required me to hunt slaves, and it 
found citizens in Massachusetts willing to act 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 229 

as judges and captors. Moreover, it discloses 
the secret of the new times, that Slavery was no 
longer mendicant, but was become aggressive 
and dangerous. 

The way in which the country was dragged to 
consent to this, and the disastrous defection (on 
the miserable cry of Union) of the men of letters, 
of the colleges, of educated men, nay, of some 
preachers of religion, — was the darkest passage 
in the history. It showed that our prosperity 
had hurt us, and that we could not be shocked 
by crime. It showed that the old religion and 
the sense of the right had faded and gone out ; 
that while we reckoned ourselves a highly culti- 
vated nation, our bellies had run away with our 
brains, and the principles of culture and progress 
did not exist. 

For I suppose that liberty is an accurate in- 
dex, in men and nations, of general progress. 
The theory of personal liberty must always 
appeal to the most refined communities and to 
the men of the rarest perception and of delicate 
moral sense. For there are rights which rest on 
the finest sense of justice, and, with every degree 
of civility, it will be more truly felt and defined. 
A barbarous tribe of good stock will, by means 
of their best heads, secure substantial liberty. 



230 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

But where there is any weakness in a race, and 
it becomes in a degree matter of concession and 
protection from their stronger neighbors, the 
incompatibility and ofFensiveness of the wrong 
will of course be most evident to the most cul- 
tivated. For it is, — is it not ? — the essence of 
courtesy, of politeness, of religion, of love, to 
prefer another, to postpone oneself, to protect 
another from oneself. That is the distinction 
of the gentleman, to defend the weak and redress 
the injured, as it is of the savage and the brutal 
to usurp and use others. 

In Massachusetts, as We all know, there has 
always existed a predominant conservative spirit. 
We have more money and value of every kind 
than other people, and wish to keep them. The 
plea on which freedom was resisted was Union. 
I went to certain serious men, who had a little 
more reason than the rest, and inquired why 
they took this part ? They answered that they 
had no confidence in their strength to resist the 
Democratic party ; that they saw plainly that all 
was going to the utmost verge of licence ; each 
was vying with his neighbor to lead the party, 
by proposing the worst measure, and they threw 
themselves on the extreme conservatism, as a 
drag on the wheel : that they knew Cuba would 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 231 

be had, and Mexico would be had, and they 
stood stiffly on conservatism, and as near to mon- 
archy as they could, only to moderate the velo- 
city with which the car was running down the 
precipice. In short, their theory was despair; 
the Whig wisdom was only reprieve, a waiting 
to be last devoured. They side with Carolina, 
or with Arkansas, only to make a show of Whig 
strength, wherewith to resist a little longer this 
general ruin. 

I have a respect for conservatism. I know 
how deeply founded it is in our nature, and how 
idle are all attempts to shake ourselves free from 
it. We are all conservatives, half Whig, half 
Democrat, in our essences : and might as well 
try to jump out of our skins as to escape from 
our Whiggery. There are two forces in Nature, 
by whose antagonism we exist ; the power of 
Fate, Fortune, the laws of the world, the order 
of things, or however else we choose to phrase 
it, the material necessities, on the one hand, — 
and Will or Duty or Freedom on the other. 

May and Must, and the sense of right and 
duty, on the one hand, and the material neces- 
sities on the other : May and Must. In vulgar 
politics the Whig goes for what has been, for 
the old necessities, — the Musts. The reformer 



232 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

goes for the Better, for the ideal good, for the 
Mays. But each of these parties must of neces- 
sity take in, in some measure, the principles 
of the other. Each wishes to cover the whole 
ground ; to hold fast and to advance. Only, 
one lays the emphasis on keeping, and the other 
on advancing. I too think the musts are a safe 
company to follow, and even agreeable. But if 
we are W^higs, let us be Whigs of nature and 
science, and so for all the necessities. Let us 
know that, over and above all the musts of pov- 
erty and appetite, is the instinct of man to rise, 
and the instinct to love and help his brother. 

Now, Gentlemen, I think we have in this 
hour instruction again in the simplest lesson. 
Events roll, millions of men are engaged, and 
the result is the enforcing of some of those first 
commandments which we heard in the nursery. 
We never get beyond our first lesson, for, 
really, the world exists, as I understand it, to 
teach the science of liberty, which begins with 
liberty from fear. 

The events of this month are teaching one 
thing plain and clear, the worthlessness of good 
tools to bad workmen ; that official papers are 
of no use ; resolutions of public meetings, plat- 
forms of conventions, no, nor laws, nor constitu- 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 233 

tionsj any more. These are all declaratory of the 
will of the moment, and are passed with more 
levity and on grounds far less honorable than 
ordinary business transactions of the street. 

You relied on the constitution. It has not 
the word slave in it ; and very good argument 
has shown that it would not warrant the crimes 
that are done under it; that, with provisions 
so vague for an object not named, and which 
could not be availed of to claim a barrel of sugar 
or a barrel of corn, the robbing of a man and 
of all his posterity is effected. You relied on 
the Supreme Court. The law was right, excel- 
lent law for the lambs. But what if unhappily 
the judges were chosen from the wolves, and 
give to all the law a wolfish interpretation ? 
You relied on the Missouri Compromise. That 
is ridden over. You relied on State sovereignty 
in the Free States to protect their citizens. 
They are driven with contempt out of the courts 
and out of the territory of the Slave States, — 
if they are so happy as to get out with their 
lives,' — and now you relied on these dismal 
guaranties infamously made in 1850; and, be- 
fore the body of Webster is yet crumbled, it is 
found that they have crumbled. This eternal 
monument of his fame and of the Union is 



234 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

rotten in four years. They are no guaranty to 
the free states. They are a guaranty to the 
slave states that, as they have hitherto met with 
no repulse, they shall meet with none. 

I fear there is no reliance to be put on any 
kind or form of covenant, no, not on sacred 
forms, none on churches, none on bibles. For 
one would have said that a Christian would not 
keep slaves ; — but the Christians keep slaves. 
Of course they will not dare to read the Bible ? 
Won't they ? They quote the Bible, quote Paul, ' 
quote Christ, to justify slavery. If slavery is 
good, then is lying, theft, arson, homicide, each 
and all good, and to be maintained by Union 
societies. 

These things show that no forms, neither con- ^ 
stitutions, nor laws, nor covenants, nor churches, 
nor bibles, are of any use in themselves. The 
Devil nestles comfortably into them all. There 
is no help but in the head and heart and ham- 
strings of a man. Covenants are of no use 
without honest men to keep them ; laws of 
none but with loyal citizens to obey them. To 
interpret Christ it needs Christ in the heart. 
The teachings of the Spirit can be apprehended 
only by the same spirit that gave them forth. 
To make good the cause of Freedom, you 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 235 

must draw off from all foolish trust in others. 
You must be citadels and warriors yourselves, 
declarations of Independence, the charter, the 
battle and the victory. Cromwell said, "We 
can only resist the superior training of the 
King's soldiers, by enlisting godly men." And 
no man has a right to hope that the laws of 
New York will defend him from the contam- 
ination of slaves another day until he has made 
up his mind that he will not owe his protection 
to the laws of New York, but to his own sense 
and spirit. Then he protects New York. He 
only who is able to stand alone is qualified for 
society. And that I understand to be the end 
for which a soul exists in this world, — to be 
himself the counterbalance of all falsehood and 
all wrong. " The army of unright is encamped 
from pole to pole, but the road of victory is 
known to the just." Everything may be taken 
away ; he may be poor, he may be houseless, 
yet he will know out of his arms to make a pil- 
low, and out of his breast a bolster. Why have 
the minority no influence? Because they have 
not a real minority of one." 

I conceive that thus to detach a man and 
make him feel that he is to owe all to himself, 
is the way to make him strong and rich ; and 



236 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

here the optimist must find, if anywhere, the 
benefit of Slavery. W^e have many teachers ; 
we are in this world for culture, to be instructed 
in realities, in the laws of moral and intelligent 
nature ; and our education is not conducted by 
toys and luxuries, but by austere and rugged 
masters, by poverty, solitude, passions, W^ar, 
Slavery ; to know that Paradise is under the 
shadow of swords ; ^ that divine sentiments which 
are always soliciting us are breathed into us 
from on high, and are an offset to a Universe 
of suffering and crime ; that self-reliance, the 
height and perfection of man, is reliance on 
God.^ The insight of the religious sentiment 
will disclose to him unexpected aids in the 
nature of things. The Persian Saadi said, " Be- 
ware of hurting the orphan. When the orphan 
sets a-crying, the throne of the Almighty is 
rocked from side to side.'* 

Whenever a man has come to this mind, that 
there is no Church for him but his believing 
prayer ; no Constitution but his dealing well 
and justly with his neighbor ; no liberty but his 
invincible will to do right, — then certain aids 
and allies will promptly appear: for the con- 
stitution of the Universe is on his side. It is 
of no use to vote down gravitation of morals. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 237 

What is useful will last, whilst that which is 
hurtful to the world will sink beneath all the 
opposing forces which it must exasperate. The 
terror which the Marseillaise struck into oppres- 
sion, it thunders again to-day, — 

" Tout est soldat pour vous combattre." 

Everything turns soldier to fight you down. 
The end for which man was made is not crime 
in any form, and a man cannot steal without 
incurring the penalties of the thief, though all 
the legislatures vote that it is virtuous, and 
though there be a general conspiracy among 
scholars and official persons to hold him up, 
and to say, " Nothing is good but stealing.'" A 
man who commits a crime defeats the end of 
his existence. He was created for benefit, and 
he exists for harm ; and as well-doing makes 
power and wisdom, ill-doing takes them away. 
A man who steals another man's labor steals 
away his own faculties ; his integrity, his hu- 
manity is flowing away from him. The habit 
of oppression cuts out the moral eyes, and, 
though the intellect goes on simulating the 
moral as before, its sanity is gradually destroyed. 
It takes away the presentiments. 

I suppose in general this is allowed, that if 



238 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

you have a nice question of right and wrong, 
you would not go with it to Louis Napoleon, 
or to a political hack, or to a slave-driver. The 
habit of mind of traders in power would not be 
esteemed favorable to delicate moral perception. 
American slavery affords no exception to this 
rule. No excess of good nature or of tender- 
ness in individuals has been able to give a new 
character to the system, to tear down the whip- 
ping-house. The plea in the mouth of a slave- 
holder that the negro is an inferior race sounds 
very oddly in my ear. " The masters of slaves 
seem generally anxious to prove that they are 
not of a race superior in any noble quality to 
the meanest of their bondmen." And indeed 
when the Southerner points to the anatomy of 
the negro, and talks of chimpanzee, — I recall 
Montesquieu^s remark, " It will not do to say 
that negroes are men, lest it should turn out 
that whites are not." 

Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not 
so helpless but it can rid itself at last of every 
wrong." But the spasms of Nature are centuries 
and ages, and will tax the faith of short-lived 
men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but 
comes surely. The proverbs of the nations 
affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 239 

say, " God may consent, but not forever." The 
delay of the Divinejustice — this was the mean- 
ing and soul of the Greek Tragedy; this the soul 
of their religion. " There has come, too, one to 
whom lurking warfare is dear. Retribution, with 
a soul full of wiles ; a violator of hospitality ; 
guileful without the guilt of guile ; limping, 
late in her arrival." They said of the happiness 
of the unjust, that " at its close it begets itself 
an offspring and does not die childless, and 
instead of good fortune, there sprouts forth for 
posterity ever-ravening calamity : " — 

*' For evil word shall evil word be said. 
For murder-stroke a murder-stroke be paid. 
Who smites must smart.*' 

These delays, you see them now in the tem- 
per of the times. The national spirit in this 
country is so drowsy, preoccupied with inter- 
est, deaf to principle. The Anglo-Saxon race 
is proud and strong and selfish. They believe 
only in Anglo-Saxons. In 1825 Greece found 
America deaf, Poland found America deaf, Italy 
and Hungary found her deaf. England main- 
tains trade, not liberty ; stands against Greece ; 
against Hungary ; against Schleswig-Holstein ; 
against the French Repubhc whilst it was a 
republic. 



240 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAVy- 

To faint hearts the times oflfer no inlyitatlon, 
and torpor exists here throughout thdj, active 
classes on the subject of domestic slaver} y and 
its appalling aggressions. Yes, that is the s^Wern 
edict of Providence, that liberty shall be PHo 
hasty fruit, but that event on event, populatior^^ "v 
on population, age on age, shall cast itself into" 
the opposite scale, and not until liberty has^ 
slowly accumulated weight enough to counter-' 
vail and preponderate against all this, can the " 
sufficient recoil come. All the great cities, all the 
refined circles, all the statesmen, Guizot, Palm- 
erston, Webster, Calhoun, are sure to be found 
befriending liberty with their words, and crush- 
ing it with their votes. Liberty is never cheap. 
It is made difficult, because freedom is the 
accomplishment and perfectness of man. He is 
a finished man ; ' earning and bestowing good ; 
equal to the world ; at home in Nature and 
dignifying that ; the sun does not see anything 
nobler, and has nothing to teach him. Therefore 
mountains of difficulty must be surmounted, 
stern trials met, wiles of seduction, dangers, 
healed by a quarantine of calamities to measure 
his strength before he dare say, I am free. 

Whilst the inconsistency of slavery with the 
principles on which the world is built guarantees 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 241 

its downfall, I own that the patience it requires 
is almost too sublime for mortals, and seems to 
demand of us more than mere hoping. And 
when one sees how fast the rot spreads, — it is 
growing serious, — I think we demand of su- 
perior men that they be superior in this, — that 
the mind and the virtue shall give their verdict 
in their day, and accelerate so far the progress 
of civilization. Possession is sure to throw its 
stupid strength for existing power, and appetite 
and ambition will go for that. Let the aid of 
virtue, intelligence and education be cast where 
they rightfully belong. They are organically ours. 
Let them be loyal to their own. I wish to see 
the instructed class here know their own flag, and 
not fire on their comrades. We should not 
forgive the clergy for taking on every issue the 
immoral side ; nor the Bench, if it put itself on 
the side of the culprit ; nor the Government, 
if it sustain the mob against the laws." 

It is a potent support and ally to a brave 
man standing single, or with a few, for the right, 
and out-voted and ostracized, to know that bet- 
ter men in other parts of the country appreciate 
the service and will rightly report him to his 
own and the next age. Without this assurance, 
he will sooner sink. He may well say, * If my 



242 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

countrymen do not care to be defended, I too 
will decline the controversy, from which I only 
reap invectives and hatred/ Yet the lovers of 
liberty may with reason tax the coldness and 
indifFerentism of scholars and literary men. 
They are lovers of liberty in Greece and Rome 
and in the English Commonwealth, but they 
are lukewarm lovers of the liberty of America in 
1854. The universities are not, as in Hobbes's 
time, "the core of rebellion,'* no, but the seat of 
inertness. They have forgotten their allegiance 
to the Muse, and grown worldly and political. I 
listened, lately, on one of those occasions when 
the university chooses one of its distinguished 
sons returning from the political arena, believing 
that senators and statesmen would be glad to 
throw off the harness and to dip again in the 
Castalian pools. But if audiences forget them- 
selves, statesmen do not. The low bows to all 
the crockery gods of the day were duly made : 
— only in one part of the discourse the orator 
allowed to transpire, rather against his will, a 
little sober sense.' It was this : ' I am, as you see, 
a man virtuously inclined, and only corrupted 
by my profession of politics. I should prefer 
the right side. You, gentlemen of these literary 
and scientific schools, and the important class 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 243 

you represent, have the power to make your ver- 
dict clear and prevailing. Had you done so, you 
would have found me its glad organ and cham- 
pion. Abstractly, I should have preferred that 
side. But you have not done it. You have not 
spoken out. You have failed to arm me. I can 
only deal with masses as I find them. Abstrac- 
tions are not for me. I go then for such parties 
and opinions as have provided me with a work- 
ing apparatus. I give you my word, not without 
regret, that I was first for you ; and though I am 
now to deny and condemn you, you see it is not 
my will but the party necessity.' Having made 
this manifesto and professed his adoration for 
liberty in the time of his grandfathers, he pro- 
ceeded with his work of denouncing freedom 
and freemen at the present day, much in the 
tone and spirit in which Lord Bacon prosecuted 
his benefactor Essex. He denounced every 
name and aspect under which liberty and pro- 
gress dare show themselves in this age and 
country, but with a lingering conscience which 
qualified each sentence with a recommendation 
to mercy. 

But I put It to every noble and generous 
spirit, to every poetic, every heroic, every re- 
ligious heart, that not so is our learning, our 



244 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

education, our poetry, our worship to be de- 
clared. Liberty is aggressive. Liberty is the 
Crusade of all brave and conscientious men, the 
Epic Poetry, the new religion, the chivalry of 
all gentlemen. This is the oppressed Lady 
whom true knights on their oath and honor 
must rescue and save. 

Now at last we are disenchanted and shall 
have no more false hopes. I respect the Anti- 
Slavery Society. It is the Cassandra that has 
foretold all that has befallen, fact for fact, years 
ago ; foretold all, and no man laid it to heart. 
It seemed, as the Turks say, " Fate m.akes that 
a man should not believe his own eyes." But 
the Fugitive Law did much to unglue the eyes 
of men, and now the Nebraska Bill leaves us 
staring. The Anti -Slavery Society will add 
many members this year. The Whig Party will 
join it ; the Democrats will join it. The pop- 
ulation of the free states will join it. I doubt 
not, at last, the slave states will join it. But be 
that sooner or later, and whoever comes or 
stays away, I hope we have reached the end of 
our unbelief, have come to a belief that there is 
a divine Providence in the world, which will 
not save us but through our own cooperation. 



VIII 
THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 

SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE CITIZENS IN 
THE TOWN HALL, IN CONCORD, 
MAY 26, 1856 



His erring foe. 
Self-assured that he prevails. 
Looks from his victim lying loWg 
And sees aloft the red right arm 
Redress the eternal scales. 



THE 
ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 

MR. CHAIRMAN : I sympathize heartily 
with the spirit of the resolutions. The 
events of the last few years and months and 
days have taught us the lessons of centuries. 
I do not see how a barbarous community and 
a civilized community can constitute one state. 
I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must 
get rid of freedom. Life has not parity of value 
in the free state and in the slave state. In one, 
it is adorned with education, with skilful labor, 
with arts, with long prospective interests, with 
sacred family ties, with honor and justice. In 
the other, life is a fever ; man is an animal, given 
to pleasure, frivolous, irritable, spending his 
days in hunting and practising with deadly 
weapons to defend himself against his slaves and 
against his companions brought up in the same 
idle and dangerous way. Such people live for 
the moment, they have properly no future, and 
readily risk on every passion a life which is of 
small value to themselves or to others. Many 
years ago, when Mr. Webster was challenged 
in Washington to a duel by one of these mad- 



248 THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 

caps, his friends came forward with prompt good 
sense and said such a thing was not to be thought 
of; Mr. Webster's hfe was the property of his 
friends and of the whole country, and was not 
to be risked on the turn of a vagabond's ball. 
Life and life are incommensurate. The whole 
state of South Carolina does not now offer one 
or any number of persons who are to be weighed 
for a moment in the scale with such a person as 
the meanest of them all has now struck down. 
The very conditions of the game must always 
be, — the worst life staked against the best. 
It is the best whom they desire to kill. It is 
only when they cannot answer your reasons, 
that they wish to knock you down. If, there- 
fore, Massachusetts could send to the Senate a 
better man than Mr. Sumner, his death would 
be only so much the more quick and certain. 
Now, as men's bodily strength, or skill with 
knives and guns, is not usually in proportion to 
their knowledge and mother-wit, but oftener in 
the inverse ratio, it will only do to send foolish 
persons to Washington, if you wish them to be 
safe. 

The outrage is the more shocking from the 
singularly pure character of its victim. Mr. 
Sumner's position is exceptional in its honor. 



THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 249 

He had not taken his degrees in the caucus and 
in hack poUtics. It is notorious that, in the long 
time when his election was pending, he refused 
to take a single step to secure it. He would 
not so much as go up to the state- house to 
shake hands with this or that person whose good 
will was reckoned important by his friends. 
He was elected. It was a homage to character 
and talent. In Congress, he did not rush into 
party position. He sat long silent and studious. 
His friends, I remember, were told that they 
would find Sumner a man of the world like the 
rest ; ' 't is quite impossible to be at Washing- 
ton and not bend ; he will bend as the rest have 
done.' Well, he did not bend. He took his 
position and kept it. He meekly bore the cold 
shoulder from some of his New England col- 
leagues, the hatred of his enemies, the pity of 
the indifferent, cheered by the love and respect 
of good men with whom he acted ; and has 
stood for the North, a little in advance of all 
the North, and therefore without adequate sup- 
port. He has never faltered in his maintenance 
of justice and freedom. He has gone beyond 
the large expectation of his friends in his in- 
creasing ability and his manlier tone. I have 
heard that some of his political friends tax him 



250 THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 

with indolence or negligence in refusing to 
make electioneering speeches, or otherwise to 
bear his part in the labor which party organiza- 
tion requires. I say it to his honor. But more 
to his honor are the faults which his enemies 
lay to his charge. I think, sir, if Mr. Sumner 
had any vices, we should be likely to hear of 
them. They have fastened their eyes like mi- 
croscopes for five years on every act, word, 
manner and movement, to find a flaw, — and 
with what result ? His opponents accuse him 
neither of drunkenness nor debauchery, nor job, 
nor speculation, nor rapacity, nor personal aims 
of any kind. No ; but with what ? Why, be- 
yond this charge, which it is impossible was 
ever sincerely made, that he broke over the 
proprieties of debate, I find him accused of pub- 
lishing his opinion of the Nebraska conspiracy 
in a letter to the people of the United States, 
with discourtesy. Then, that he is an abolition- 
ist ; as if every sane human being were not an 
abolitionist, or a believer that all men should be 
free. And the third crime he stands charged 
with, is, that his speeches were written before 
they were spoken ; which, of course, must be 
true in Sumner^s case, as it was true of Webster, 
of Adams, of Calhoun, of Burke, of Chatham, 



THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 251 

of Demosthenes ; of every first-rate speaker 
that ever lived. It is the high compliment he 
pays to the intelligence of the Senate and of 
the country. When the same reproach was cast 
on the first orator of ancient times by some cav- 
iller of his day, he said, " I should be ashamed 
to come with one unconsidered word before 
such an assembly.'* Mr. Chairman, when I 
think of these most small faults as the worst 
which party hatred could allege, I think I may 
borrow the language which Bishop Burnet ap- 
plied to Sir Isaac Newton, and say that Charles 
Sumner " has the whitest soul I ever knew." 

Well, sir, this noble head, so comely and so 
wise, must be the target for a pair of bullies to 
beat with clubs. The murderer's brand shall 
stamp their foreheads wherever they may wan- 
der in the earth. But I wish, sir, that the high 
respects of this meeting shall be expressed to 
Mr. Sumner ; that a copy of the resolutions that 
have been read may be forwarded to him. I 
wish that he may know the shudder of terror 
which ran through all this community on the 
first tidings of this brutal attack. Let him hear 
that every man of worth in New England loves 
his virtues ; that every mother thinks of him 
as the protector of families ; that every friend 



252 THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 

of freedom thinks him the friend of freedom. 
And if our arms at this distance cannot defend 
him from assassins, we confide the defence of a 
life so precious to all honorable men and true 
patriots, and to the Almighty Maker of men.' 



IX 

SPEECH 

AT THE KANSAS RELIEF MEETING IN CAMBRIDGE 
WEDNESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER lo, 1856 



And ye shall succor men; 

'T is nobleness to serve; 

Help them who cannot help again; 

Beware from right to swerve. 



SPEECH 
ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 

1 REGRET, with all this company, the ab- 
sence of Mr. Whitman of Kansas, whose 
narrative was to constitute the interest of this 
meeting. Mr. Whitman is not here ; but know- 
ing, as we all do, why he is not, what duties 
kept him at home, he is more than present. 
His vacant chair speaks for him. For quite 
other reasons, I had been wiser to have stayed 
at home, unskilled as I am to address a polit- 
ical meeting, but it is impossible for the most 
recluse to extricate himself from the questions 
of the times. 

There is this peculiarity about the case of 
Kansas, that all the right is on one side. We 
hear the screams of hunted wives and children 
answered by the howl of the butchers. The 
testimony of the telegraphs from St. Louis and 
the border confirm the worst details. The 
printed letters of border ruffians avow the facts. 
When pressed to look at the cause of the mis- 
chief in the Kansas laws, the President falters 
and declines the discussion; but his support- 
ers in the Senate, Mr. Cass, Mr. Geyer, Mr. 



256 SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 

Hunter, speak out, and declare the intolerable 
atrocity of the code. It is a maxim that all party- 
spirit produces the incapacity to receive natural 
impressions from facts ; and our recent political 
history has abundantly borne out the maxim. 
But these details that have come from Kansas 
are so horrible, that the hostile press have but 
one word in reply, namely, that it is all exag- 
geration, 'tis an Abolition lie. Do the Com- 
mittee of Investigation say that the outrages 
have been overstated ? Does their dismal cata- 
logue of private tragedies show it ? Do the 
private letters ? Is it an exaggeration, that Mr. 
Hopps of Somerville, Mr. Hoyt of Deerfield, 
Mr. Jennison of Groton, Mr. Phillips of Berk- 
shire, have been murdered ? That Mr. Robin- 
son of Fitchburg has been imprisoned ? Rev. 
Mr. Nute of Springfield seized, and up to this 
time we have no tidings of his fate ? 

In these calamities under which they suffer, 
and the worst which threaten them, the people 
of Kansas ask for bread, clothes, arms and men, 
to save them alive, and enable them to stand 
against these enemies of the human race. They 
have a right to be helped, for they have helped 
themselves. 

This aid must be sent, and this is not to be 



SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 257 

doled out as an ordinary charity ; but bestowed 
up to the magnitude of the want, and, as has 
been elsewhere saidj " on the scale of a national 
action." I think we are to give largely, lavishly, 
to these men. And we must prepare to do it. 
We must learn to do with less, live in a smaller 
tenement, sell our apple-trees, our acres, our 
pleasant houses. I know people who are mak- 
ing haste to reduce their expenses and pay their 
debts, not with a view to new accumulations, 
but in preparation to save and earn for the 
benefit of the Kansas emigrants. 

We must have aid from individuals, — we 
must also have aid from the state. I know that 
the last legislature refused that aid. I know 
that lawyers hesitate on technical grounds, and 
wonder what method of relief the legislature 
will apply. But I submit that, in a case like 
this, where citizens of Massachusetts, legal 
voters here, have emigrated to national territory 
under the sanction of every law, and are then 
set on by highwaymen, driven from their new 
homes, pillaged, and numbers of them killed 
and scalped, and the whole world knows that 
this is no accidental brawl, but a systematic war 
to the knife, and in defiance of all laws and 
liberties, — I submit that the governor and 



258 SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 

legislature should neither slumber nor sleep 
till they have found out how to send effectual 
aid and comfort to these poor farmers, or else 
should resign their seats to those who can. But 
first let them hang the halls of the state-house 
with black crape, and order funeral service to be 
said for the citizens whom they were unable 
to defend. 

We stick at the technical difficulties. I think 
there never was a people so choked and stulti- 
fied by forms. We adore the forms of law, 
instead of making them vehicles of wisdom 
and justice. I like the primary assembly. I own 
I have little esteem for governments. I esteem 
them only good in the moment when they are 
established. I set the private man first. He 
only who is able to stand alone is qualified to 
be a citizen. Next to the private man, I value 
the primary assembly, met to watch the govern- 
ment and to correct it. That is the theory of 
the American State, that it exists to execute the 
will of the citizens, is always responsible to them, 
and is always to be changed when it does not. 
First, the private citizen, then the primary 
assembly,, and the government last. 

In this country for the last few years the gov- 
ernment has been the chief obstruction to the 



SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 259 

common weal. Who doubts that Kansas would 
have been very well settled, if the United States 
had let it alone ? The government armed and 
led the ruffians against the poor farmers. I do 
not know any story so gloomy as the politics 
of this country for the last twenty years, central- 
izing ever more manifestly round one spring, 
and that a vast crime, and ever more plainly, 
until it is notorious that all promotion, power 
and policy are dictated from one source, — illus- 
trating the fatal effects of a false position to 
demoralize legislation and put the best people 
always at a disadvantage ; — one crime always 
present, always to be varnished over, to find 
fine names for ; and we free statesmen, as ac- 
complices to the guilt, ever in the power of the 
grand offender. 

Language has lost its meaning in the uni- 
versal cant. Representative Government is really 
misrepresentative ; Union is a conspiracy against 
the Northern States which the Northern States 
are to have the privilege of paying for ; the 
adding of Cuba and Central America to the slave 
marts is enlarging the area of Freedom. Manifest 
Destiny^ Democracy^ Freedom^ fine names for an 
ugly thing. They call it otto of rose and laven- 
der, — I call it bilge-water. They call it Chivalry 



26o SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 

and Freedom ; I call it the stealing all the 
earnings of a poor man and the earnings of his 
little girl and boy, and the earnings of all that 
shall come from him, his children's children 
forever. 

But this is Union, and this is Democracy ; and 
our poor people, led by the nose by these fine 
words, dance and sing, ring bells and fire can- 
non, with every new link of the chain which is 
forged for their limbs by the plotters in the 
Capitol. 

What are the results of law and union ? 
There is no Union. Can any citizen of Massa- 
chusetts travel in honor through Kentucky and 
Alabama and speak his mind ? Or can any citi- 
zen of the Southern country who happens to 
think kidnapping a bad thing, say so ? Let Mr. 
Underwood of Virginia answer. Is it to be sup- 
posed that there are no men in Carolina who 
dissent from the popular sentiment now reign- 
ing there ? It must happen, in the variety of 
human opinions, that there are dissenters. They 
are silent as the grave. Are there no women in 
that country, — women, who always carry the 
conscience of a people ? Yet we have not heard 
one discordant whisper. 

In the free states, we give a snivelling sup- 



SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 261 

port to slavery. The judges give cowardly in- 
terpretations to the law, in direct opposition 
to the known foundation of all law, that every 
immoral statute is void. And here of Kansas, 
the President says : " Let the complainants go 
to the courts ; " though he knows that when the 
poor plundered farmer comes to the court, he 
finds the ringleader who has robbed him dis- 
mounting from his own horse, and unbuckling 
his knife to sit as his judge. 

The President told the Kansas Committee 
that the whole difficulty grew from " the factious 
spirit of the Kansas people respecting institu- 
tions which they need not have concerned them- 
selves about." A very remarkable speech from 
a Democratic President to his fellow citizens, 
that they are not to concern themselves with 
institutions which they alone are to create and 
determine. The President is a lawyer, and 
should know the statutes of the land. But I 
borrow the language of an eminent man, used 
long since, with far less occasion : " If that be 
law, let the ploughshare be run under the 
foundations of the Capitol ; " — and if that be 
Government, extirpation is the only cure. 

I am glad to see that the terror at disunion and 
anarchy is disappearing. Massachusetts, in its 



262 SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 

heroic day, had no government — was an anar- 
chy. Every man stood on his own feet, was his 
own governor ; and there was no breach of peace 
from Cape Cod to Mount Hoosac. California, 
a few years ago, by the testimony of all people 
at that time in the country, had the best govern- 
ment that ever existed. Pans of gold lay drying 
outside of every man's tent, in perfect security. 
The land was measured into little strips of a few 
feet wide, all side by side. A bit of ground that 
your hand could cover was worth one or two 
hundred dollars, on the edge of your strip ; and 
there was no dispute. Every man throughout 
the country was armed with knife and revolver, 
and it was known that instant justice would be 
administered to each offence, and perfect peace 
reigned. For the Saxon man, when he is well 
awake, is not a pirate but a citizen, all made of 
hooks and eyes, and links himself naturally to 
his brothers, as bees hook themselves to one 
another and to their queen in a loyal swarm. 

But the hour is coming when the strongest 
will not be strong enough. A harder task will 
the new revolution of the nineteenth century be 
than was the revolution of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. I think the American Revolution bought 
its glory cheap. If the problem was new, it was 



SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 263 

simple. If there were few people, they were 
united, and the enemy three thousand miles off. 
But now, vast property, gigantic interests, family 
connections, webs of party, cover the land with 
a network that immensely multiplies the dangers 
of war." 

Fellow citizens, in these times full of the fate 
of the Republic, I think the towns should hold 
town meetings, and resolve themselves into 
Committees of Safety, go into permanent ses- 
sions, adjourning from week to week, from 
month to month. I wish we could send the 
sergeant-at-arms to stop every American who is 
about to leave the country. Send home every 
one who is abroad, lest they should find no 
country to return to. Come home and stay at 
home, while there is a country to save. When 
it is lost it will be time enough then for any who 
are luckless enough to remain alive to gather 
up their clothes and depart to some land where 
freedom exists. 



REMARKS 

AT A MEETING FOR THE RELIEF OF THE FAMILY OF 

JOHN BROWN, AT TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON 

NOVEMBER i8, 1859 



**JoHN Brown in Kansas settled, like a steadfast Yankee 
farmer. 
Brave and godly, with four sons — all stalwart men of 

might. 
There he spoke aloud for Freedom, and the Border strife 

grew warmer 
Till the Rangers fired his dwelling, in his absence, in the 
night; 

And Old Brown, 
Osawatomie Brown, 
Came homeward in the morning to find his house burned 
down. 

Then he grasped his trusty rifle, and boldly fought for 

Freedom; 
Smote from border unto border the fierce invading band: 
And he and his brave boys vowed — so might Heaven help 

and speed 'em — 
They would save those grand old prairies from the curse 
that blights the land; 

And Old Brown, 
Osawatomie Brown, 
Said, ' Boys, the Lord will aid us ! ' and he shoved his ram- 
rod down.*' 

Edmund Clarence Stedman, John Brown. 



JOHN BROWN 

MR. CHAIRMAN, and Fellow Citi- 
zens : I share the sympathy and sorrow 
which have brought us together. Gentlemen 
who have preceded me have well said that no 
wall of separation could here exist. This com- 
manding event which has brought us together, 
eclipses all others which have occurred for a 
long time in our history, and I am very glad 
to see that this sudden interest in the hero of 
Harper's Ferry has provoked an extreme curi- 
osity in all parts of the Republic, in regard to 
the details of his history. Every anecdote is 
eagerly sought, and I do not wonder that gen- 
tlemen find traits of relation readily between him 
and themselves. One finds a relation in the 
church, another in the profession, another in 
the place of his birth. He was happily a repre- 
sentative of the American Republic. Captain 
John Brown is a farmer, the fifth in descent 
from Peter Brown, who came to Plymouth in 
the Mayflower, in 1620. All the six have been 
farmers. His grandfather, of Simsbury, in Con- 
necticut, was a captain in the Revolution. His 
father, largely interested as a raiser of stock. 



268 JOHN BROWN: BOSTON SPEECH 

became a contractor to supply the army with 
beef, in the war of 1 812, and our Captain John 
Brown, then a boy, with his father was present 
and witnessed the surrender of General Hull. 
He cherishes a great respect for his father, as a 
man of strong character, and his respect is prob- 
/'' ably just. For himself, he is so transparent that 
all men see him through. He is a man to make 
friends wherever on earth courage and integrity 
are esteemed, the rarest of heroes, a pure ideal- 
ist, with no by-ends of his own. Many of you 
have seen him, and every one who has heard him 
speak has been impressed alike by his simple, 
artless goodness, joined with his sublime cour- 
age. He joins that perfect Puritan faith which 
brought his fifth ancestor to Plymouth Rock 
with his grandfather's ardor in the Revolution. 
He believes in two articles, — two instruments, 
shall I say ? — the Golden Rule and the Decla- 
ration of Independence; and he used this ex- 
pression in conversation here concerning them, 
" Better that a whole generation of men, women 
and children should pass away by a violent death 
than that one word of either should be violated 
in this country." There is a Unionist, -^ there 
is a strict constructionist for you. He believes 
in the Union of the States, and he conceives 



JOHN BROWN: BOSTON SPEECH 269 

that the only obstruction to the Union is Slavery, 
and for that reason, as r. patriot, he works for its 
abolition. The governor of Virginia has pro- 
nounced his eulogy in „i manner that discredits 
the moderation of our umid parties. His own 
speeches to the court have interested the nation 
in him. What magnanimity, and what innocent 
pleading, as of childhood ! You remember his 
words : " If I had interfered in behalf of the 
rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called 
great, or any of their friends, parents, wives 
or children, it would all have been right. But 
I believe that to have interfered as I have done, 
for the despised poor, was not wrong, but 
right." ^ 

It is easy to see what a favorite he will be 
with history, which plays such pranks with 
temporary reputations. Nothing can resist the 
sympathy which all elevated minds must feel 
with Brown, and through them the whole civil- 
ized world; and if he must suffer, he must drag 
official gentlemen into an immortality most 
undesirable, of which they have already some 
disagreeable forebodings. Indeed, it is the 
reductio ad ahsurdum of Slavery, when the gov- 
ernor of Virginia is forced to hang a man whom 
he declares to be a man of the most integrity, 



270 JOHN BROWN: BOSTON SPEECH 

truthfulness and courage he has ever met. Is 
that the kind of man tlie gallows is built for ? 
It were bold to affirm that there is within that 
broad commonwealth, t,t this moment, another 
citizen as worthy to live, and as deserving of all 
public and private honor, as this poor prisoner/ 

But we are here to think of relief for the 
family of John Brown. To my eyes, that fam- 
ily looks very large and very needy of relief. 
It comprises his brave fellow sufferers in the 
Charlestown Jail ; the fugitives still hunted in 
the mountains of Virginia and Pennsylvania; 
the sympathizers with him in all the states ; 
and, I may say, almost every man who loves 
the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, like him, and who sees what a tiger*s 
thirst threatens him in the malignity of public 
sentiment in the slave states. It seems to me 
that a common feeling joins the people of Mas- 
sachusetts with him. 

I said John Brown was an idealist. He be- 
lieved in his ideas to that extent that he existed 
to put them all into action ; he said ' he did not 
believe in moral suasion, he believed in putting 
the thing through.' He saw how deceptive the 
forms are. We fancy, in . Massachusetts, that 
we are free ; yet it seems the government is 



JOHN BROWN: BOSTON SPEECH 271 

quite unreliable. Great wealth, great popula- 
tion, men of talent in the executive, on the 
bench, — all the forms right, — and yet, life 
and freedom are not safe. Why ? Because the 
judges rely on the forms, and do not, like John 
Brown, use their eyes to see the fact behind the 
forms. They assume that the United States 
can protect its witness or its prisoner. And in 
Massachusetts that is true, but the moment he 
is carried out of the bounds of Massachusetts, 
the United States, it is notorious, afford no pro- 
tection at all ; the government, the judges, are 
an envenomed party, and give such protection 
as they give in Utah to honest citizens, or in 
Kansas ; such protection as they gave to their 
own Commodore Paulding, when he was simple 
enough to mistake the formal instructions of his 
government for their real meaning." The state 
judges fear collision between their two allegi- 
ances ; but there are worse evils than collision ; 
namely, the doing substantial injustice. A good 
man will see that the use of a judge is to secure 
good government, and where the citizen's weal 
is imperilled by abuse of the federal power, to 
use that arm which can secure it, viz., the local 
government. Had that been done on certain 
calamitous occasions, we should not have seen 



272 JOHN BROWN: BOSTON SPEECH 

the honor of Massachusetts trailed in the dust, 
stained to all ages, once and again, by the ill- 
timed formalism of a venerable bench. If judges 
cannot find law enough to maintain the sover- 
eignty of the state, and to protect the life and 
freedom of every inhabitant not a criminal, it is 
idle to compliment them as learned and vener- 
able. What avails their learning or veneration ? 
At a pinch, they are no more use than idiots. 
After the mischance they wring their hands, but 
they had better never have been born.' A Ver- 
mont judge, Hutchinson, who has the Declara- 
tion of Independence in his heart; a Wisconsin 
judge, who knows that laws are for the protec- 
tion of citizens against kidnappers, is worth a 
court-house full of lawyers so idolatrous of forms 
as to let go the substance. Is any man in Mas- 
sachusetts so simple as to believe that when a 
United States Court in Virginia, now, in its pre- 
sent reign of terror, sends to Connecticut, or 
New York, or Massachusetts, for a witness, it 
wants him for a witness ? No ; it wants him for 
a party ; it wants him for meat to slaughter and 
eat. And your habeas corpus is, in any way in 
which it has been, or, I fear, is likely to be used, 
a nuisance, and not a protection ; for it takes 
away his right reliance on himself, and the nat- 



I 



JOHN BROWN: BOSTON SPEECH 273 

ural assistance of his friends and fellow citizens, 
by offering him a form which is a piece of paper. 
But I am detaining the meeting on matters 
which others understand better. I hope, then, 
that, in administering relief to John Brown's 
family, we shall remember all those whom his 
fate concerns, all who are in sympathy with him, 
and not forget to aid him in the best way, by 
securing freedom and independence in Massa- 
chusetts. 



XI 



XI 
JOHN BROWN 

SPEECH AT SALEM, JANUARY 6, i860 



'* A MAN there came, whence none could tell. 
Bearing a touchstone in his hand. 
And tested all things in the land 
By its unerring spell. 

A thousand transformations rose 
From fair to foul, from foul to fair: 
The golden crown he did not spare. 
Nor scorn the beggar's clothes, 
• •••*•• 

Then angrily the people cried, 
* The loss outweighs the profit far; 
Our goods suffice us as they are: 
We will not have them tried. ' 

And since they could not so avail 
To check his unrelenting quest. 
They seized him, saying, * Let him test 
How real is our jail! ' 

But though they slew him with the sword. 
And in the fire his touchstone burned. 
Its doings could not be o'erturned. 
Its undoings restored. 

And when, to stop all future harm. 
They strewed its ashes to the breeze. 
They little guessed each grain of these 
Conveyed the perfect charm.'* 

William Allingham. 



JOHN BROWN 

MR. CHAIRMAN : I have been struck 
with one fact, that the best orators who 
have added their praise to his fame, — and I 
need not go out of this house to find the purest 
eloquence in the country, — have one rival who 
comes off a little better, and that is John Brown. 
Everything that is said of him leaves people a 
little dissatisfied ; but as soon as they read his 
own speeches and letters they are heartily con- 
tented, — such is the singleness of purpose which 
justifies him to the head and the heart of all. 
Taught by this experience, I mean, in the few 
remarks I have to make, to cling to his history, 
or let him speak for himself. 

John Brown, the founder of liberty in Kan- 
sas, was born in Torrington, Litchfield County, 
Connecticut, in 1800. When he was five years old 
his father emigrated to Ohio, and the boy was 
there set to keep sheep and to look after cattle 
and dress skins ; he went bareheaded and bare- 
footed, and clothed in buckskin. He said that 
he loved rough play, could never have rough 
play enough ; could not see a seedy hat without 
wishing to pull it off. But for this it needed 



278 JOHN BROWN: SALEM SPEECH 

that the playmates should be equal ; not one in 
fine clothes and the other in buckskin ; not one 
his own master, hale and hearty, and the other 
watched and whipped. But it chanced that in 
Pennsylvania, where he was sent by his father 
to collect cattle, he fell in with a boy whom he 
heartily liked and whom he looked upon as his 
superior. This boy was a slave ; he saw him 
beaten with an iron shovel, and otherwise mal- 
treated ; he saw that this boy had nothing better 
to look forward to in life, whilst he himself was 
petted and made much of; for he was much con- 
sidered in the family where he then stayed, from 
the circumstance that this boy of twelve years 
had conducted alone a drove of cattle a hundred 
miles. But the colored boy had no friend, and 
no future. This worked such indignation in him 
that he swore an oath of resistance to slavery as 
long as he lived. And thus his enterprise to go 
into Virginia and run off five hundred or a thou- 
sand slaves was not a piece of spite or revenge, 
a plot of two years or of twenty years, but the 
keeping of an oath made to heaven and earth 
forty-seven years before. Forty-seven years at 
least, though I incline to accept his own account 
of the matter at Charlestown, which makes the 
date a little older, when he said, " This was all 



JOHN BROWN: SALEM SPEECH 279 

settled millions of years before the world was 
made." 

He grew up a religious and manly person, in 
severe poverty ; a fair specimen of the best stock 
of New England; having that force of thought 
and that sense of right which are the warp and 
woof of greatness. Our farmers were Orthodox 
Calvinists, mighty in the Scriptures ; had learned 
that life was a preparation, a " probation," to use 
their word, for a higher world, and was to be 
spent in loving and serving mankind." 

Thus was formed a romantic character abso- 
lutely without any vulgar trait ; living to ideal 
ends, without any mixture of self-indulgence or 
compromise, such as lowers the value of benevo- 
lent and thoughtful men we know ; abstemious, 
refusing luxuries, not sourly and reproachfully, 
but simply as unfit for his habit; quiet and gentle 
as a child in the house. And, as happens usually 
to men of romantic character, his fortunes were 
romantic. Walter Scott would have delighted to 
draw his picture and trace his adventurous ca- 
reer. A shepherd and herdsman, he learned the 
manners of animals, and knew the secret signals 
by which animals communicate.^ He made his 
hard bed on the mountains with them; he learned 
to drive his flock through thickets all but im- 



28o JOHN BROWN: SALEM SPEECH 

passable ; he had all the skill of a shepherd by 
choice of breed and by wise husbandry to obtain 
the best wool, and that for a course of years. 
And the anecdotes preserved show a far-seeing 
skill and conduct which, in spite of adverse 
accidents, should secure, one year with another, 
an honest reward, first to the farmer, and after- 
wards to the dealer. If he kept sheep, it was 
with a royal mind ; and if he traded in wool, he 
was a merchant prince, not in the amount of 
wealth, but in the protection of the interests 
confided to him. 

I am not a little surprised at the easy effront- 
ery with which political gentlemen, in and out 
of Congress, take it upon them to say that there 
are not a thousand men in the N orth who sym- 
pathize with John Brown. It would be far safer 
and nearer the truth to say that all people, in 
proportion to their sensibility and self-respect, 
sympathize with him. For it is impossible to 
see courage, and disinterestedness, and the love 
that casts out fear, without sympathy. All women 
are drawn to him by their predominance of 
sentiment. All gentlemen, of course, are on his 
side. I do not mean by "gentlemen," people 
of scented hair and perfumed handkerchiefs, but 
men of gentle blood and generosity, " fulfilled 



JOHN BROWN: SALEM SPEECH 281 

with all nobleness," who, like the Cid, give the 
outcast leper a share of their bed ; like the dying 
Sidney, pass the cup of cold water to the dying 
soldier'who needs it more. For what is the oath 
of gentle blood and knighthood ? What but to 
protect the weak and lowly against the strong 
oppressor ? 

Nothing is more absurd than to complain of 
this sympathy, or to complain of a party of men 
united in opposition to slavery. As well com- 
plain of gravity, or the ebb of the tide. Who 
makes the abolitionist ? The slave-holder. The 
sentiment of mercy is the natural recoil which 
the laws of the universe provide to protect man- 
kind from destruction by savage passions. And 
our blind statesmen go up and down, with com- 
mittees of vigilance and safety, hunting for the 
origin of this new heresy. They will need a very 
vigilant committee indeed to find its birthplace, 
and a very strong force to root it out. For the 
arch-abolitionist, older than Brown, and older 
than the Shenandoah Mountains, is Love, 
whose other name is Justice, which was before 
Alfred, before Lycurgus, before slavery, and 
will be after it.' 



XII 
THEODORE PARKER 

AN ADDRESS AT THE MEMORIAL MEETING AT THE 
MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, JUNE 15, i860 



Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man 
Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban. — 

There 's a background of God to each hard-working feature. 
Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced 
In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest: 
There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest. 
If not dreadfully awkward, not gracefiil at least; 

But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke. 

Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak. 

You forget the man wholly, you 're thankful to meet 

With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street. 

And to hear, you 're not over-particular whence. 

Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense." 

— Lowell, A Fable for Critics. 



THEODORE PARKER 

AT the death of a good and admirable per- 
son we meet to console and animate each 
other by the recollection of his virtues. 

I have the feeling that every man's biography 
is at his own expense. He furnishes not only 
the facts but the report. I mean that all bio- 
graphy is autobiography. It is only what he 
tells of himself that comes to be known and 
believed. In Plutarch's lives of Alexander and 
Pericles, you have the secret whispers of their 
confidence to their lovers and trusty friends. For 
it was each report of this kind that impressed 
those to whom it was told in a manner to secure 
its being told everywhere to the best, to those 
who speak with authority to their own times 
and therefore to ours. For the political rule is 
a cosmical rule, that if a man is not strong in 
his own district, he is not a good candidate else- 
where. 

He whose voice will not be heard here again 
could well afford to tell his experiences ; they 
were all honorable to him, and were part of the 
history of the civil and religious liberty of his 
times. Theodore Parker was a son of the soil. 



286 THEODORE PARKER 

charged with the energy of New England, 
strong, eager, inquisitive of knowledge, of a dil- 
igence that never tired, upright, of a haughty- 
independence, yet the gentlest of companions ; 
a man of study, fit for a man of the world; with 
decided opinions and plenty of power to state 
them ; rapidly pushing his studies so far as to 
leave few men qualified to sit as his critics." He 
elected his part of duty, or accepted nobly that 
assigned him in his rare constitution. Wonder- 
ful acquisition of knowledge, a rapid wit that 
heard all, and welcomed all that came, by seeing 
its bearing. Such was the largeness of his recep- 
tion of facts and his skill to employ them that 
it looked as if he were some president of council 
to whom a score of telegraphs were ever bring- 
ing in reports ; and his information would have 
been excessive, but for the noble use he made 
of it ever in the interest of humanity. He had 
a strong understanding, a logical method, a love 
for facts, a rapid eye for their historic relations, 
and a skill in stripping them of traditional lus- 
tres. He had a sprightly fancy, and often 
amused himself with throwing his meaning into 
pretty apologues ; yet we can hardly ascribe to 
his mind the poetic element, though his scholar- 
ship had made him a reader and quoter of verses. 



THEODORE PARKER 287 

A little more feeling of the poetic significance 
of his facts would have disqualified him for some 
of his severer offices to his generation. The old 
religions have a charm for most minds which it 
is a little uncanny to disturb. 'T is sometimes 
a question, shall we not leave them to decay 
without rude shocks ? I remember that I found 
some harshness in his treatment both of Greek 
and of Hebrew antiquity, and sympathized with 
the pain of many good people in his auditory, 
whilst I acquitted him, of course, of any wish 
to be flippant. He came at a time when, to the 
irresistible march of opinion, the forms still re- 
tained by the most advanced sects showed loose 
and lifeless, and he, with something less of aflfec- 
tionate attachment to the old, or with more 
vigorous logic, rejected them. 'T is objected to 
him that he scattered too many illusions. Per- 
haps more tenderness would have been graceful ; 
but it is vain to charge him with perverting the 
opinions of the new generation. 

The opinions of men are organic. Simply, 
those came to him who found themselves ex- 
pressed by him. And had they not met this en- 
lightened mind, in which they beheld their own 
opinions combined with zeal in every cause of 
love and humanity, they would have suspected 



288 THEODORE PARKER 

their opinions and suppressed them, and so sunk 
into melancholy or malignity — a feeling of lone- 
liness and hostility to what was reckoned respect- 
able. 'Tis plain to me that he has achieved a 
historic immortality here ; that he has so woven 
himself in these few years into the history of Bos- 
ton, that he can never be left out of your annals. 
It will not be in the acts of city councils, nor 
of obsequious mayors ; nor, in the state-house, 
the proclamations of governors, with their fail- 
ing virtue — failing them at critical moments — 
that coming generations will study what really 
befell ; but in the plain lessons of Theodore 
Parker in this Music Hall, in Faneuil Hall, or 
in legislative committee rooms, that the true 
temper and authentic record of these days will 
be read. The next generation will care little for 
the chances of elections that govern governors 
now, it will care Httle for fine gentlemen who be- 
haved shabbily ; but it will read very intelligently 
in his rough story, fortified with exact anecdotes, 
precise with names and dates, what part was taken 
by each actor ; who threw himself into the cause 
of humanity and came to the rescue of civiliza- 
tion at a hard pinch, and who blocked its course. 
The vice charged against America is the want 
of sincerity in leading men. It does not lie at his 



THEODORE PARKER 289 

door. He never kept back the truth for fear to 
make an enemy. But, on the other hand, it was 
complained that he was bitter and harsh, that his 
zeal burned with too hot a flame. It is so diffi- 
cult, in evil times, to escape this charge ! for the 
faithful preacher most of all. It was his merit, 
like Luther, Knox and Latimer, and John Bap- 
tist, to speak tart truth, when that was peremptory 
and when there were few to say it. But his sym- 
pathy for goodness was not less energetic. One 
fault he had, he overestimated his friends, — I 
may well say it, — and sometimes vexed them 
with the importunity of his good opinion, whilst 
they knew better the ebb which follows un- 
founded praise. He was capable, it must be said, 
of the most unmeasured eulogies on those he es- 
teemed, especially if he had any jealousy that they 
did not stand with the Boston public as highly 
as they ought. His commanding merit as a 
reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men 
in pulpits — I cannot think of one rival — that 
the essence of Christianity is its practical morals ; 
it is there for use, or it is nothing ; and if you 
combine it with sharp trading, or with ordinary 
city ambitions to gloze over municipal corrup- 
tions, or private intemperance, or successful 
fraud, or immoral politics, or unjust wars, or the 



XI 



290 THEODORE PARKER 

cheating of Indians, or the robbery of frontier 
nations, or leaving your principles at home to 
follow on the high seas or in Europe a supple 
complaisance to tyrants, — it is a hypocrisy, 
and the truth is not in you ; and no love of 
rehgious music or of dreams of Swedenborg, or 
praise of John Wesley, or of Jeremy Taylor, 
can save you from the Satan which you are. 

His ministry fell on a political crisis also ; on 
the years when Southern slavery broke over its 
old banks, made new and vast pretensions, and 
wrung from the weakness or treachery of North- 
ern people fatal concessions in the Fugitive 
Slave Bill and the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise. Two days, bitter in the memory of 
Boston, the days of the rendition of Sims and 
of Burns, made the occasion of his most remark- 
able discourses. He kept nothing back. In ter- 
rible earnest he denounced the public crime, and 
meted out to every official, high and low, his due 
portion.' By the incessant power of his state- 
ment, he made and held a party. It was his 
great service to freedom. He took away the 
reproach of silent consent that would otherwise 
have lain against the indignant minority, by 
uttering in the hour and place wherein these 
outrages were done, the stern protest. 



THEODORE PARKER 291 

But whilst I praise this frank speaker, I have 
no wish to accuse the silence of others. There 
are men of good powers who have so much sym- 
pathy that they must be silent when they are not 
in sympathy. If you don't agree with them, they 
know they only injure the truth by speaking. 
Their faculties will not play them true, and they 
do not wish to squeak and gibber, and so they 
shut their mouths. I can readily forgive this, 
only not the other, the false tongue which makes 
the worse appear the better cause. There were, 
of course, multitudes to censure and defame this 
truth-speaker. But the brave know the brave. 
Fops, whether in hotels or churches, will utter 
the fop's opinion, and faintly hope for the salva- 
tion of his soul ; but his manly enemies, who 
despised the fops, honored him ; and it is well 
known that his great hospitable heart was the 
sanctuary to which every soul conscious of an 
earnest opinion came for sympathy — alike the 
brave slave-holder and the brave slave-rescuer. 
These met in the house of this honest man — 
for every sound heart loves a responsible person, 
one who does not in generous company say 
generous things, and in mean company base 
things, but says one thing, now cheerfully, now 
indignantly, but always because he must, and 



292 THEODORE PARKER 

because he sees that, whether he speak or refrain 
from speech, this is said over him ; and history, 
nature and all souls testify to the same. 

Ah, my brave brother ! it seems as if, in a 
frivolous age, our loss were immense, and your 
place cannot be supplied. But you will already 
be consoled in the transfer of your genius, know- 
ing well that the nature of the world will affirm 
to all men, in all times, that which for twenty- 
five years you valiantly spoke ; that the winds 
of Italy murmur the same truth over your 
grave ; the winds of America over these be- 
reaved streets ; that the sea which bore your 
mourners home affirms it, the stars in their 
courses, and the inspirations of youth ; whilst 
the polished and pleasant traitors to human 
rights, with perverted learning and disgraced 
graces, rot and are forgotten with their double 
tongue saying all that is sordid for the corrup- 
tion of man. 

The sudden and singular eminence of Mr. 
Parker, the importance of his name and influ- 
ence, are the verdict of his country to his vir- 
tues. We have few such men to lose ; amiable 
and blameless at home, feared abroad as the 
standard-bearer of liberty, taking all the duties 
he could grasp, and more, refusing to spare 



THEODORE PARKER 293 

himself, he has gone down in early glory to his 
grave, to be a living and enlarging power, wher- 
ever learning, wit, honest valor and independ- 
ence are honored." 



XIII 
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 



To the mizzen, the mam, and the fore 

Up with it once more ! — 

The old tri-color. 

The ribbon of power. 

The white, blue and red which the nations adore! 

It was down at half-mast 

For a grief — that is past ! 

To the emblem of glory no sorrow can last! 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

USE, labor of each for all, is the health and 
virtue of all beings. Ich dien, I serve, is 
a truly royal motto. And it is the mark of 
nobleness to volunteer the lowest service, the 
greatest spirit only attaining to humility. Nay, 
God is God because he is the servant of all. 
Well, now here comes this conspiracy of slavery, 
— they call it an institution, I call it a destitu- 
tion, — this stealing of men and setting them to 
work, stealing their labor, and the thief sitting 
idle himself; and for two or three ages it has 
lasted, and has yielded a certain quantity of 
rice, cotton and sugar. And, standing on this 
doleful experience, these people have endeav- 
ored to reverse the natural sentiments of man- 
kind, and to pronounce labor disgraceful, and 
the well-being of a man to consist in eating the 
fruit of other men's labor. Labor : a man coins 
himself into his labor; turns his day, his 
strength, his thought, his affection into some 
product which remains as the visible sign of his 
power ; and to protect that, to secure that to 
him, to secure his past self to his future self, 
is the object of all government. There is no 



298 AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

interest in any country so imperative as that of 
labor ; it covers all, and constitutions and gov- 
ernments exist for that, — to protect and insure 
it to the laborer. All honest men are daily striv- 
ing to earn their bread by their industry. And 
who is this who tosses his empty head at this 
blessing in disguise, the constitution of human 
nature, arid calls labor vile, and insults the faith- 
ful workman at his daily toil? I see for such 
madness no hellebore, — for such calamity no 
solution but servile war and the Africanization 
of the country that permits it. 

At this moment in America the aspects of 
political society absorb attention. In every 
house, from Canada to the Gulf, the children 
ask the serious father, — " What is the news 
of the war to-day, and when will there be better 
times ? " The boys have no new clothes, no 
gifts, no journeys; the girls must go without 
new bonnets ; boys and girls find their education, 
this year, less liberal and complete." All the 
little hopes that heretofore made the year pleasant 
are deferred. The state of the country fills us 
with anxiety and stern duties. We have at- 
tempted to hold together two states of civiliza- 
tion : a higher state, where labor and the tenure 
of land and the right of suffrage are democrat- 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 299 

leal ; and a lower state, in which the old mil- 
itary tenure of prisoners or slaves, and of power 
and land in a few hands, makes an oligarchy : 
we have attempted to hold these two states of 
'society under one law. But the rude and early 
state of society does not work well with the later, 
nay, works badly, and has poisoned politics, 
public morals and social intercourse in the Re- 
public, now for many years. 

The times put this question. Why cannot the 
best civilization be extended over the whole 
country, since the disorder of the less-civilized 
portion menaces the existence of the country ? 
Is this secular progress we have described, this 
evolution of man to the highest powers, only to 
give him sensibility, and not to bring duties 
with it ? Is he not to make his knowledge prac- 
tical ? to stand and to withstand ? Is not civili- 
zation heroic also ? Is it not for action ? has it 
not a will ? " There are periods,'* said Niebuhr, 
" when something much better than happiness 
and security of life is attainable." We live in a 
new and exceptionable age. America is another 
word for Opportunity. Our whole history ap- 
pears like a last effort of the Divine Providence 
in behalf of the human race ; and a literal, slavish 
following of precedents, as by a justice of the 



300 AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

peace, is not for those who at this hour lead the 
destinies of this people. The evil you contend 
with has taken alarming proportions, and you 
still content yourself with parrying the blows it 
aims, but, as if enchanted, abstain from striking 
at the cause/ 

If the American people hesitate, it is not for 
want of warning or advices. The telegraph has 
been swift enough to announce our disasters. 
The journals have not suppressed the extent 
of the calamity. Neither was there any want of 
argument or of experience. If the war brought 
any surprise to the North, it was not the fault 
of sentinels on the watch-tower, who had fur- 
nished full details of the designs, the muster and 
the means of the enemy. Neither was anything 
concealed of the theory or practice of slavery. 
To what purpose make more big books of these 
statistics ? There are already mountains of facts, 
if any one wants them. But people do not want 
them. They bring their opinion into the world. 
If they have a comatose tendency in the brain, 
they are pro-slavery while they live ; if of a ner- 
vous sanguineous temperament, they are aboli- 
tionists. Then interests were never persuaded. 
Can you convince the shoe interest, or the iron 
interest, or the cotton interest, by reading pass- 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 301 

ages from Milton or Montesquieu? You wish 
to satisfy people that slavery is bad economy. 
Why, the Edinburgh Review pounded on that 
string, and made out its case, forty years ago. 
A democratic statesman said to me, long since, 
that, if he owned the state of Kentucky, he 
would manumit all the slaves, and be a gainer 
by the transaction. Is this new ? No, every- 
body knows it. As a general economy it is ad- 
mitted. But there is no one owner of the state, 
but a good many small owners. One man owns 
land and slaves ; another owns slaves only. 
Here is a woman who has no other property, — 
like a lady in Charleston I knew of, who 
owned fifteen sweeps and rode in her carriage. 
It is clearly a vast inconvenience to each of 
these to make any change, and they are fretful 
and talkative, and all their friends are ; and 
those less interested are inert, and, from want 
of thought, averse to innovation. It is like free 
trade, certainly the interest of nations, but by no 
means the interest of certain towns and districts, 
which tariff feeds fat ; and the eager interest of 
the few overpowers the apathetic general con- 
viction of the many. Banknotes rob the public, 
but are such a daily convenience that we silence 
our scrwpJes and make believe they are gold. 



302 AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

So imposts are the cheap and right taxation ; 
but, by the disHke of people to pay out a 
direct tax, governments are forced to render 
life costly by making them pay twice as much, 
hidden in the price of tea and sugar. 

In this national crisis, it is not argument that 
we want, but that rare courage which dares com- 
mit itself to a principle, believing that Nature 
is its ally, and will create the instruments it re- 
quires, and more than make good any petty and 
injurious profit which it may disturb. There 
never was such a combination as this of ours, 
and the rules to meet it are not set down in any 
history. We want men of original perception 
and original action, who can open their eyes 
wider than to a nationality, namely, to con- 
siderations of benefit to the human race, can act 
in the interest of civilization. Government must 
not be a parish clerk, a justice of the peace. It 
has, of necessity, in any crisis of the state, the 
absolute powers of a dictator. The existing 
administration is entitled to the utmost candor. 
It is to be thanked for its angelic virtue, com- 
pared with any executive experiences with which 
we have been familiar. But the times will not 
allow us to indulge in compliment. I wish I 
saw in the people that inspiration which, if gov- 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 303 

ernment would not obey the same, would leave 
the government behind and create on the mo- 
ment the means and executors it wanted. Better 
the war should more dangerously threaten us, 
— should threaten fracture in what is still whole, 
and punish us with burned capitals and slaugh- 
tered regiments, and so exasperate the people to 
energy, exasperate our nationality. There are 
Scriptures written invisibly on men's hearts, 
whose letters do not come out until they are 
enraged. They can be read by war-fires, and by 
eyes in the last peril. 

We cannot but remember that there have 
been days in American history, when, if the 
free states had done their duty, slavery had 
been blocked by an immovable barrier, and our 
recent calamities forever precluded. The free 
states yielded, and every compromise was sur- 
render and invited new demands. Here again 
is a new occasion which heaven offers to sense 
and virtue. It looks as if we held the fate of 
the fairest possession of mankind in our hands, 
to be saved by our firmness or to be lost by 
hesitation. 

The one power that has legs long enough and 
strong enough to wade across the Potomac 
offers itself at this hour ; the one strong enough 



304 AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

to bring all the civility up to the height of 
that which is best, prays now at the door of Con- 
gress for leave to move. Emancipation is the 
demand of civilization. That is a principle ; 
everything else is an intrigue. This is a progres- 
sive policy, puts the whole people in healthy, 
productive, amiable position, puts every man in 
the South in just and natural relations with 
every man in the North, laborer with laborer. 

I shall not attempt to unfold the details of 
the project of emancipation. It has been stated 
with great ability by several of its leading advo- 
cates. I will only advert to some leading points 
of the argument, at the risk of repeating the 
reasons of others. The war is welcome to the 
Southerner; a chivalrous sport to him, like 
hunting, and suits his semi-civilized condition. 
On the climbing scale of progress, he is just up 
to war, and has never appeared to such advan- 
tage as in the last twelvemonth. It does not 
suit us. We are advanced some ages on the 
war-state, — to trade, art and general cultivation. 
His laborer works for him at home, so that he 
loses no labor by the war. All our soldiers are 
laborers ; so that the South, with its inferior 
numbers, is almost on a footing in effective war- 
population with the North. Again, as long as 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 305 

we fight without any affirmative step taken by 
the government, any word intimating forfeiture 
in the rebel states of their old privileges under 
the law, they and we fight on the same side, for 
slavery. Again, if we conquer the enemy, — 
what then ? We shall still have to keep him 
under, and it will cost as much to hold him 
down as it did to get him down. Then comes 
the summer, and the fever will drive the soldiers 
home ; next winter we must begin at the begin- 
ning, and conquer him over again. What use 
then to take a fort, or a privateer, or get pos- 
session of an inlet, or to capture a regiment of 
rebels ? 

But one weapon we hold which is sure. Con- 
gress can, by edict, as a part of the military de- 
fence which it is the duty of Congress to provide, 
abolish slavery, and pay for such slaves as we 
ought to pay for. Then the slaves near our 
armies will come to us ; those in the interior 
will know in a week what their rights are, and 
will, where opportunity offers, prepare to take 
them. Instantly, the armies that now confront 
you must run home to protect their estates, and 
must stay there, and your enemies will dis- 
appear. 

There can be no safety until this step is taken. 

XI 



3o6 AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

We fancy that the endless debate, emphasized 
by the crime and by the cannons of this war, 
has brought the free states to some conviction 
that it can never go well with us whilst this 
mischief of slavery remains in our politics, and 
that by concert or by might we must put an end 
to it. But we have too much experience of the 
futility of an easy reliance on the momentary 
good dispositions of the public. There does 
exist, perhaps, a popular will that the Union 
shall not be broken, — that our trade, and there- 
fore our laws, must have the whole breadth of 
the continent, and from Canada to the Gulf. 
But since this is the rooted belief and will of 
the people, so much the more are they in dan- 
ger, when impatient of defeats, or impatient of 
taxes, to go with a rush for some peace ; and 
what kind of peace shall at that moment be 
easiest attained, they will make concessions for 
it, — will give up the slaves, and the whole tor- 
ment of the past half-century will come back to 
be endured anew. 

Neither do I doubt, if such a composition 
should take place, that the Southerners will 
come back quietly and politely, leaving their 
haughty dictation. It will be an era of good 
feelings. There will be a lull after so loud a 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 307 

storm ; and, no doubt, there will be discreet 
men from that section who will earnestly strive 
to inaugurate more moderate and fair adminis- 
tration of the government, and the North will 
for a time have its full share and more, in place 
and counsel. But this will not last ; — not for 
want of sincere good will in sensible Southern- 
ers, but because Slavery will again speak through 
them its harsh necessity. It cannot live but 
by injustice, and it will be unjust and violent to 
the end of the world.' 

The power of Emancipation is this, that 
it alters the atomic social constitution of the 
Southern people. Now, their interest is in 
keeping out white labor ; then, when they must 
pay wages, their interest will be to let it in, to 
get the best labor, and, if they fear their blacks, 
to invite Irish, German and American laborers. 
Thus, whilst Slavery makes and keeps disunion. 
Emancipation removes the whole objection to 
union. Emancipation at one stroke elevates 
the poor-white of the South, and identifies his 
interest with that of the Northern laborer. 

Now, in the name of all that is simple and 
generous, why should not this great right be 
done ? Why should not America be capable of a 
second stroke for the well-being of the human 



3o8 AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

race, as eighty or ninety years ago she was for the 
first, — of an affirmative step in the interests of 
human civility, urged on her, too, not by any 
romance of sentiment, but by her own extreme 
perils ? It is very certain that the statesman who 
shall break through the cobwebs of doubt, fear 
and petty cavil that lie in the way, will be greeted 
by the unanimous thanks of mankind. Men 
reconcile themselves very fast to a bold and 
good measure when once it is taken, though they 
condemned it in advance. A week before the 
two captive commissioners were surrendered to 
England, every one thought it could not be 
done : it would divide the North. It was done, 
and in two days all agreed it was the right action.' 
And this action, which costs so little (the parties 
injured by it being such a handful that they can 
very easily be indemnified), rids the world, at one 
stroke, of this degrading nuisance, the cause of 
war and ruin to nations. This measure at once 
puts all parties right. This is borrowing, as I 
said, the omnipotence of a principle. What is so 
foolish as the terror lest the blacks should be 
made furious by freedom and wages ? It is deny- 
ing these that is the outrage, and makes the 
danger from the blacks. But justice satisfies 
everybody, — white man, red man, yellow man 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 309 

and black man. All like wages, and the appetite 
grows by feeding. 

But this measure, to be effectual, must come 
speedily. The weapon is slipping out of our 
hands. " Time," say the Indian Scriptures, 
" drinketh up the essence of every great and 
noble action which ought to be performed, and 
which is delayed in the execution." ' 

I hope it is not a fatal objection to this policy 
that it is simple and beneficent thoroughly, which 
is the tribute of a moral action. An unprece- 
dented material prosperity has not tended to 
make us Stoics or Christians. But the laws by 
which the universe is organized reappear at every 
point, and will rule it. The end of all political 
struggle is to establish morality as the basis of 
all legislation. It is not free institutions, it is 
not a republic, it is not a democracy, that is the 
end, — no, but only the means. Morality is 
the object of government.^ We want a state of 
things in which crime shall not pay. This is the 
consolation on which we rest in the darkness 
of the future and the afflictions of to-day, that 
the government of the world is moral, and does 
forever destroy what is not. It is the maxim of 
natural philosophers that the natural forces wear 
out in time all obstacles, and take place : and it 



310 AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

is the maxim of history that victory always falls 
at last where it ought to fall ; or, there is perpet- 
ual march and progress to ideas. But in either 
case, no link of the chain can drop out. Nature 
works through her appointed elements ; and 
ideas must work through the brains and the arms 
of good and brave men, or they are no better 
than dreams. 

Since the above pages were written. President 
Lincoln has proposed to Congress that the gov- 
ernment shall cooperate with any state that shall 
enact a gradual abolishment of slavery. In the 
recent series of national successes, this message 
is the best. It marks the happiest day in the 
political year. The American Executive ranges 
itself for the first time on the side of freedom. 
If Congress has been backward, the President 
has advanced. This state-paper is the more 
interesting that it appears to be the President's 
individual act, done under a strong sense of duty. 
He speaks his own thought in his own style. 
All thanks and honor to the Head of the State ! 
The message has been received throughout the 
country with praise, and, we doubt not, with 
more pleasure than has been spoken. If Con- 
gress accords with the President, it is not yet too 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 311 

late to begin the emancipation ; but we think it 
will always be too late to make it gradual. All 
experience agrees that it should be immediate/ 
More and better than the President has spoken 
shall, perhaps, the effect of this message be, — 
but, we are sure, not more or better than he 
hoped in his heart, when, thoughtful of all the 
complexities of his position, he penned these 
cautious words. 



XIV 

THE 
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON IN SEPTEMBER, l86x 



To-day unbind the captive. 
So only are ye unbound; 
Lift up a people from the dust. 
Trump of their rescue, sound ! 

Pay ransom to the owner 

And fill the bag to the brim. 

Who is the owner ? The slave is owner. 

And ever was. Pay him. 

O North! give him beauty for rags. 
And honor, O South ! for his shame; 
Nevada! coin thy golden crags 
With freedom's image and name. 

Up! and the dusky race 
That sat in darkness long, — 
Be swift their feet as antelopes. 
And as behemoth strong. 

Come, East and West and North, 
By races, as snow-flakes. 
And carry my purpose forth. 
Which neither halts nor shakes. 

My will ftilfiUed shall be. 
For in daylight or in dark. 
My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
His way home to the mark. 



THE EMANCIPATION 
PROCLAMATION 

IN SO many arid forms which states encrust 
themselves with, once in a century, if so 
often, a poetic act and record occur. These are 
the jets of thought into affairs, when, roused by 
danger or inspired by genius, the political lead- 
ers of the day break the else insurmountable 
routine of class and local legislation, and take 
a step forward in the direction of catholic and 
universal interests. Every step in the history 
of political liberty is a sally of the human mind 
into the untried Future, and has the interest 
of genius, and is fruitful in heroic anecdotes. 
Liberty is a slow fruit. It comes, like religion, 
for short periods, and in rare conditions, as if 
awaiting a culture of the race which shall make 
it organic and permanent. Such moments of 
expansion in modern history were the Confes- 
sion of Augsburg, the plantation of America, 
the English Commonwealth of 1648, the De- 
claration of American Independence in 1776, 
the British emancipation of slaves in the West 
Indies, the passage of the Reform Bill, the re- 
peal of the Corn- Laws, the Magnetic Ocean 



3i6 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

Telegraph, though yet imperfect, the passage 
of the Homestead Bill in the last Congress, 
and now, eminently. President Lincoln's Pro- 
clamation on the twenty-second of September. 
These are acts of great scope, working on a long 
future and on permanent interests, and honoring 
alike those who initiate and those who receive 
them. These measures provoke no noisy joy, 
but are received into a sympathy so deep as to 
apprise us that mankind are greater and better 
than we know.' At such times it appears as 
if a new public were created to greet the new 
event. It is as when an orator, having ended 
the compliments and pleasantries with which he 
conciliated attention, and having run over the 
superficial fitness and commodities of the mea- 
sure he urges, suddenly, lending himself to some 
happy inspiration, announces with vibrating 
voice the grand human principles involved ; — 
the bravos and wits who greeted him loudly 
thus far are surprised and overawed ; a new 
audience is found in the heart of the assembly, 
— an audience hitherto passive and uncon- 
cerned, now at last so searched and kindled that 
they come forward, every one a representative 
of mankind, standing for all nationalities. 
The extreme moderation with which the Presi- 



EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 317 

dent advanced to his design, — his long-avowed 
expectant policy, as if he chose to be strictly 
the executive of the best public sentiment of 
the country, waiting only till it should be un- 
mistakably pronounced, — so fair a mind that 
none ever listened so patiently to such extreme 
varieties of opinion, — so reticent that his de- 
cision has taken all parties by surprise, whilst 
yet it is just the sequel of his prior acts, — the 
firm tone in which he announces it, without 
inflation or surplusage, — all these have be- 
spoken such favor to the act that, great as the 
popularity of the President has been, we are 
beginning to think that we have underestimated 
the capacity and virtue which the Divine Pro- 
vidence has made an instrument of benefit so 
vast. He has been permitted to do more for 
America than any other American man. He is 
well entitled to the most indulgent construction. 
Forget all that we thought shortcomings, every 
mistake, every delay. In the extreme embar- 
rassments of his part, call these endurance, wis- 
dom, magnanimity ; illuminated, as they now 
are, by this dazzling success. 

When we consider the immense opposition 
that has been neutralized or converted by the 
progress of the war (for it is not long since the 



31 8 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

President anticipated the resignation of a large 
number of officers in the army, and the seces- 
sion of three states, on the promulgation of 
this policy), — when we see how the great stake 
which foreign nations hold in our affairs has re- 
cently brought every European power as a client 
into this court, and it became every day more 
apparent what gigantic and what remote interests 
were to be affected by the decision of the Pre- 
sident, — one can hardly say the deliberation 
was too long. Against all timorous counsels he 
had the courage to seize the moment ; and such 
was his position, and such the felicity attending 
the action, that he has replaced government in 
the good graces of mankind. " Better is virtue 
in the sovereign than plenty in the season,*' say 
the Chinese. 'Tis wonderful what power is, 
and how ill it is used, and how its ill use makes 
life mean, and the sunshine dark. Life in Amer- 
ica had lost much of its attraction in the later 
years. The virtues of a good magistrate undo 
a world of mischief, and, because Nature works 
with rectitude, seem vastly more potent than 
the acts of bad governors, which are ever 
tempered by the good nature in the people, and 
the incessant resistance which fraud and violence 
encounter. The acts of good governors work a 



EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 319 

geometrical ratio, as one midsummer day seems 
to repair the damage of a year of war. 

A day which most of us dared not hope to 
see, an event worth the dreadful war, worth its 
costs and uncertainties, seems now to be close 
before us. October, November, December will 
have passed over beating hearts and plotting 
brains : then the hour will strike, and all men 
of African descent who have faculty enough to 
find their way to our lines are assured of the 
protection of American law. 

It is by no means necessary that this measure 
should be suddenly marked by any signal results 
on the negroes or on the rebel masters. The 
force of the act is that it commits the country to 
this justice, — that it compels the innumerable 
officers, civil, military, naval, of the Republic to 
range themselves on the line of this equity. It 
draws the fashion to this side. It is not a mea- 
sure that admits of being taken back. Done, it 
cannot be undone by a new administration. For 
slavery overpowers the disgust of the moral 
sentiment only through immemorial usage. It 
cannot be introduced as an improvement of the 
nineteenth century. This act makes that the lives 
of our heroes have not been sacrificed in vain. It 
makes a victory of our defeats. Our hurts are 



320 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

healed ; the health of the nation is repaired. 
With a victory like this, we can stand many dis- 
asters. It does not promise the redemption of 
the black race ; that lies not with us : but it 
relieves it of our opposition. The President by 
this act has paroled all the slaves in America ; 
they will no more fight against us : and it relieves 
our race once for all of its crime and false posi- 
tion. The first condition of success is secured 
in putting ourselves right. We have recovered 
ourselves from our false position, and planted 
ourselves on a law of Nature : — 

"If that fail. 
The pillared firmament is rottenness. 
And earth's base built on stubble.'* ' 

The government has assured itself of the best 
constituency in the world : every spark of intel- 
lect, every virtuous feeling, every religious heart, 
every man of honor, every poet, every philo- 
sopher, the generosity of the cities, the health of 
the country, the strong arms of the mechanic, 
the endurance of farmers, the passionate con- 
science of women, the sympathy of distant 
nations, — all rally to its support. 

Of course, we are assuming the firmness of 
the policy thus declared. It must not be a paper 
proclamation. We confide that Mr. Lincoln is in 



EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 321 

earnest, and as he has been slow in making up 
his mind, has resisted the importunacy of parties 
and of events to the latest moment, he will be 
as absolute in his adhesion. Not only will he 
repeat and follow up his stroke, but the nation 
will add its irresistible strength. If the ruler has 
duties, so has the citizen. In times like these, 
when the nation is imperilled, what man can, 
without shame, receive good news from day to 
day without giving good news of himself? What 
right has any one to read in the journals tidings 
of victories, if he has not bought them by his own 
valor, treasure, personal sacrifice, or by service 
as good in his own department ? With this blot 
removed from our national honor, this heavy 
load lifted oif the national heart, we shall not fear 
henceforward to show our faces among mankind. 
We shall cease to be hypocrites and pretenders, 
but what we have styled our free institutions 
will be such." 

In the light of this event the public distress 
begins to be removed. What if the brokers' quo- 
tations show our stocks discredited, and the gold 
dollar costs one hundred and twenty-seven 
cents ? These tables are fallacious. Every acre 
in the free states gained substantial value on 
the twenty-second of September. The cause of 

XI 



322 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

disunion and war has been reached and begun to 
be removed. Every man's house-lot and garden 
are relieved of the malaria which the purest 
winds and strongest sunshine could not pene- 
trate and purge. The territory of the Union 
shines to-day with a lustre which every European 
emigrant can discern from far ; a sign of inmost 
security and permanence. Is it feared that taxes 
will check immigration ? That depends on what 
the taxes are spent for. If they go to fill up this 
yawning Dismal Swamp, which engulfed armies 
and populations, and created plague, and neu- 
tralized hitherto all the vast capabilities of this 
continent, — then this taxation, which makes the 
land wholesome and habitable, and will draw all 
men unto it, is the best investment in which 
property-holder ever lodged his earnings. 

Whilst we have pointed out the opportuneness 
of the Proclamation, it remains to be said that 
the President had no choice. He might look 
wistfully for what variety of courses lay open to 
him ; every line but one was closed up with fire. 
This one, too, bristled with danger, but through 
it was the sole safety. The measure he has adopted 
was imperative. It is wonderful to see the un- 
seasonable senility of what is called the Peace 
Party, through all its masks, blinding their eyes 



EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 323 

to the main feature of the war, namely, its inev- 
itableness. The war existed long before the can- 
nonade of Sumter, and could not be postponed. 
It might have begun otherwise or elsewhere, but 
war was in the minds and bones of the combat- 
ants, it was written on the iron leaf, and you 
might as easily dodge gravitation. If we had con- 
sented to a peaceable secession of the rebels, 
the divided sentiment of the border states made 
peaceable secession impossible, the insatiable 
temper of the South made it impossible, and the 
slaves on the border, wherever the border might 
be, were an incessant fuel to rekindle the fire. 
Give the Confederacy New Orleans, Charleston, 
and Richmond, and they would have demanded 
St. Louis and Baltimore. Give them these, and 
they would have insisted on Washington. Give 
them Washington, and they would have assumed 
the army and navy, and, through these, Phil- 
adelphia, New York, and Boston. It looks as if 
the battle-field would have been at least as large 
in that event as it is now. The war was formid- 
able, but could not be avoided. The war was 
and is an immense mischief, but brought with it 
the immense benefit of drawing a line and rally- 
ing the free states to fix it impassably, — pre- 
venting the whole force of Southern connection 



324 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

and influence throughout the North from dis- 
tracting every city with endless confusion, de- 
taching that force and reducing it to handfuls, 
and, in the progress of hostilities, disinfecting us 
of our habitual proclivity, through the affection 
of trade and the traditions of the Democratic 
party, to follow Southern leading/ 

These necessities which have dictated the con- 
duct of the federal government are overlooked 
especially by our foreign critics. The popular 
statement of the opponents of the war abroad is 
the impossibility of our success. " If you could 
add," say they, " to your strength the whole 
army of England, of France and of Austria, you 
could not coerce eight millions of people to 
come under this government against their will." 
This is an odd thing for an Englishman, a 
Frenchman or an Austrian to say, who remem- 
bers Europe of the last seventy years, — the 
condition of Italy, until 1859, — of Poland, 
since 1793, — of France, of French Algiers, — 
of British Ireland, and British India. But grant- 
ing the truth, rightly read, of the historical 
aphorism, that " the people always conquer," it 
is to be noted that, in the Southern States, the 
tenure of land and the local laws, with slavery, 
give the social system not a democratic but an 



EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 325 

aristocratic complexion ; and those states have 
shown every year a more hostile and aggressive 
temper, until the instinct of self-preservation 
forced us into the war. And the aim of the war 
on our part is indicated by the aim of the Pre- 
sident's Proclamation, namely, to break up the 
false combination of Southern society, to destroy 
the piratic feature in it which makes it our en- 
emy only as it is the enemy of the human race, 
and so allow its reconstruction on a just and 
healthful basis. Then new affinities will act, the 
old repulsion will cease, and, the cause of war 
being removed. Nature and trade may be trusted 
to establish a lasting peace. 

We think we cannot overstate the wisdom 
and benefit of this act of the government. The 
malignant cry of the Secession press within the 
free states, and the recent action of the Con- 
federate Congress, are decisive as to its efficiency 
and correctness of aim. Not less so is the silent 
joy which has greeted it in all generous hearts, 
and the new hope it has breathed into the world. 
It was well to delay the steamers at the wharves 
until this edict could be put on board. It will 
be an insurance to the ship as it goes plunging 
through the sea with glad tidings to all people. 
Happy are the young, who find the pestilence 



326 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

cleansed out of the earth, leaving open to them 
an honest career. Happy the old, who see Na- 
ture purified before they depart. Do not let the 
dying die : hold them back to this world, until 
you have charged their ear and heart with this 
message to other spiritual societies, announcing 
the melioration of our planet: — 

" Incertainties now crown themselves assured. 
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.'* ' 

Meantime that ill-fated, much-injured race 
which the Proclamation respects will lose some- 
what of the dejection sculptured for ages in their 
bronzed countenance, uttered in the wailing of 
their plaintive music, — a race naturally benevo- 
lent, docile, industrious, and whose very miseries 
sprang from their great talent for usefulness, 
which, in a more moral age, will not only defend 
their independence, but will give them a rank 
among nations.^ 



XV 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

REMARKS AT THE FUNERAL SERVICES HELD IN 
CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1865 



" Nature, they say, doth dote. 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan. 
Repeating us by rote: 
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw. 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new. 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

How beautifiil to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed. 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be. 
Not lured by any cheat of birth. 
But by his clear-grained human worth. 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 

They knew that outward grace is dust; 
They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill. 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent, like perfect steel, to spring again and thrust. 

Nothing of Europe here. 
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still. 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Could Nature's equal scheme deface; . . . 
Here was a type of the true elder race. 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face." 
Lowell, Commemoration Ode. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

WE meet under the gloom of a calamity 
which darkens down over the minds of 
good men in all civil society, as the fearful 
tidings travel over sea, over land, from country 
to country, like the shadow of an uncalculated 
eclipse over the planet. Old as history is, and 
manifold as are its tragedies, I doubt if any 
death has caused so much pain to mankind as 
this has caused, or will cause, on its announce- 
ment ; and this, not so much because nations 
are by modern arts brought so closely together, 
as because of the mysterious hopes and fears 
which, in the present day, are connected with 
the name and institutions of America. 

In this country, on Saturday, every one was 
struck dumb, and saw at first only deep below 
deep, as he meditated on the ghastly blow. 
And perhaps, at this hour, when the coffin 
which contains the dust of the President sets 
forward on its long march through mourning 
states, on its way to his home in Illinois, we 
might well be silent, and suffer the awful voices 
of the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first 
despair was brief: the man was not so to be 



330 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

mourned. He was the most active and hope- 
ful of men ; and his work had not perished : 
but acclamations of praise for the task he had 
accomplished burst out into a song of triumph, 
which even tears for his death cannot keep 
down. 

The President stood before us as a man of 
the people. He was thoroughly American, had 
never crossed the sea, had never been spoiled 
by English insularity or French dissipation ; a 
quite native, aboriginal man, as an acorn from 
the oak ; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous 
accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working on 
a farm, a flatboatman, a captain in the Black 
Hawk War, a country lawyer, a representative 
in the rural legislature of Illinois ; — on such 
modest foundations the broad structure of his 
fame was laid. How slowly, and yet by hap- 
pily prepared steps, he came to his place. All 
of us remember — it is only a history of five 
or six years — the surprise and the disappoint- 
ment of the country at his first nomination by 
the convention at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then 
in the culmination of his good fame, was the 
favorite of the Eastern States. And when the 
new and comparatively unknown name of Lin- 
coln was announced (notwithstanding the report 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 331 

of the acclamations of that convention), we 
heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed 
too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build 
so grave a trust in such anxious times ; and men 
naturally talked of the chances in politics as in- 
calculable. But it turned out not to be chance. 
The profound good opinion which the people 
of Illinois and of the West had conceived of 
him, and which they had imparted to their col- 
leagues, that they also might justify themselves 
to their constituents at home, was not rash, 
though they did not begin to know the riches 
of his worth.' 

A plain man of the people, an extraordinary 
fortune attended him. He offered no shining 
qualities at the first encounter ; he did not 
offend by superiority. He had a face and man- 
ner which disarmed suspicion, which inspired 
confidence, which confirmed good will. He was 
a man without vices. He had a strong sense of 
duty, which it was very easy for him to obey. 
Then, he had what farmers call a long head ; 
was excellent in working out the sum for him- 
self; in arguing his case and convincing you 
fairly and firmly. Then, it turned out that he 
was a great worker ; had prodigious faculty of 
performance ; worked easily. A good worker is 



332 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

so rare ; everybody has some disabling quality. 
In a host of young men that start together and 
promise so many brilliant leaders for the next 
age, each fails on trial ; one by bad health, one 
by conceit, or by love of pleasure, or lethargy, 
or an ugly temper, — each has some disquali- 
fying fault that throws him out of the career. 
But this man was sound to the core, cheerful, 
persistent, all right for labor, and liked nothing 
so well. 

Then, he had a vast good nature, which made 
him tolerant and accessible to all ; fair-minded, 
leaning to the claim of the petitioner ; affable, 
and not sensible to the affliction which the 
innumerable visits paid to him when President 
would have brought to any one else.' And how 
this good nature became a noble humanity, in 
many a tragic case which the events of the war 
brought to him, every one will remember ; and 
with what increasing tenderness he dealt when 
a whole race was thrown on his compassion. 
The poor negro said of him, on an impressive 
occasion, " Massa Linkum am eberywhere." 

Then his broad good humor, running easily 
into jocular talk, in which he delighted and in 
which he excelled, was a rich gift to this wise 
man. It enabled him to keep his secret; to 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 333 

meet every kind of man and every rank in so- 
ciety ; to take off the edge of the severest deci- 
sions ; to mask his own purpose and sound his 
companion ; and to catch with true instinct the 
temper of every company he addressed. And, 
more than all, it is to a man of severe labor, in 
anxious and exhausting crises, the natural re- 
storative, good as sleep, and is the protection 
of the overdriven brain against rancor and in- 
sanity. 

He is the author of a multitude of good say- 
ings, so disguised as pleasantries that it is cer- 
tain they had no reputation at first but as jests ; 
and only later, by the very acceptance and adop- 
tion they find in the mouths of millions, turn 
out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am sure 
if this man had ruled in a period of less facility 
of printing, he would have become mytho- 
logical in a very few years, like ^sop or Pilpay, 
or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables 
and proverbs. But the weight and penetration 
of many passages in his letters, messages and 
speeches, hidden now by the very closeness of 
their application to the moment, are destined 
hereafter to wide fame. What pregnant defini- 
tions ; what unerring common sense ; what fore- 
sight ; and, on great occasion, what lofty, and 



334 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

more than national, what humane tone ! His 
brief speech at Gettysburg will not easily be 
surpassed by words on any recorded occasion. 
This, and one other American speech, that of 
John Brown to the court that tried him, and 
a part of Kossuth*s speech at Birmingham, can 
only be compared with each other, and with no 
fourth. 

His occupying the chair of state was a tri- 
umph of the good sense of mankind, and of the 
public conscience. This middle-class country 
had got a middle-class president, at last. Yes, in 
manners and sympathies, but not in powers, for 
his powers were superior. This man grew accord- 
ing to the need. His mind mastered the problem 
of the day ; and as the problem grew, so did his 
comprehension of it. Rarely was man so fitted 
to the event. In the midst of fears and jealous- 
ies, in the Babel of counsels and parties, this man 
wrought incessantly with all his might and all his 
honesty, laboring to find what the people wanted, 
and how to obtain that. It cannot be said there 
is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man 
was fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of 
resistance, nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The 
times have allowed no state secrets ; the nation 
has been in such ferment, such multitudes had 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 335 

to be trusted, that no secret could be kept. 
Every door was ajar, and we know all that be- 
fell. 

Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of 
the war. Here was place for no holiday magis- 
trate, no fair-weather sailor ; the new pilot was 
hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years, 
— four years of battle-days, — his endurance, 
his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were 
sorely tried and never found wanting. There, 
by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his 
fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic 
figure in the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the 
true history of the American people in his time. 
Step by step he walked before them ; slow with 
their slowness, quickening his march by theirs, 
the true representative of this continent; an 
entirely public man ; father of his country, the 
pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, 
the thought of their minds articulated by his 
tongue. 

Adam Smith remarks that the axe, which in 
Houbraken's portraits of British kings and wor- 
thies is engraved under those who have suffered 
at the block, adds a certain lofty charm to the 
picture. And who does not see, even in this 
tragedy so recent, how fast the terror and ruin of 



336 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the massacre are already burning into glory- 
around the victim ? Far happier this fate than to 
have lived to be wished away ; to have watched 
the decay of his own faculties ; to have seen 
— perhaps even he — the proverbial ingrati- 
tude of statesmen ; to have seen mean men 
preferred. Had he not lived long enough to 
keep the greatest promise that ever man made 
to his fellow men, — the practical abolition 
of slavery ? He had seen Tennessee, Missouri 
and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He 
had seen Savannah, Charleston and Richmond 
surrendered; had seen the main army of the 
rebellion lay down its arms. He had conquered 
the public opinion of Canada, England and 
France." Only Washington can compare with 
him in fortune. 

And what if it should turn out, in the unfold- 
ing of the web, that he had reached the term ; 
that this heroic deliverer could no longer serve 
us ; that the rebellion had touched its natural 
conclusion, and what remained to be done re- 
quired new and uncommitted hands, — a new 
spirit born out of the ashes of the war ; and that 
Heaven, wishing to show the world a completed 
benefactor, shall make him serve his country 
even more by his death than by his life ? Na- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 337 

tions, like kings, are not good by facility and 
complaisance. " The kindness of kings con- 
sists in justice and strength." Easy good nature 
has been the dangerous foible of the Republic, 
and it was necessary that its enemies should 
outrage it, and drive us to unwonted firmness, 
to secure the salvation of this country in the 
next ages. 

The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful 
Genius which ruled in the affairs of nations ; 
which, with a slow but stern justice, carried for- 
ward the fortunes of certain chosen houses, weed- 
ing out single offenders or offending families, 
and securing at last the firm prosperity of the 
favorites of Heaven. It was too narrow a view 
of the Eternal Nemesis. There is a serene 
Providence which rules the fate of nations, which 
makes little account of time, little of one gener- 
ation or race, makes no account of disasters, 
conquers aUke by what is called defeat or by 
what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and 
obstruction, crushes everything immoral as in- 
human, and obtains the ultimate triumph of the 
best race by the sacrifice of everything which re- 
sists the moral laws of the world." It makes its 
own instruments, creates the man for the time, 
trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and 



338 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

arms him for his task. It has given every race 
its own talent, and ordains that only that race 
which combines perfectly with the virtues of all 
shall endure/ 



XVI 

HARVARD COMMEMORATION 
SPEECH 

JULY 21, 1865 

" « Old classmate, say- 
Do you remember our Commencement Day ? 
Were we such boys as these at twenty ? ' Nay, 
God called them to a nobler task than ours. 
And gave them holier thoughts and manlier powers, — 
This is the day of fruits and not of flowers! 
These * boys * we talk about like ancient sages 
Are the same men we read of in old pages — 
The bronze recast of dead heroic ages ! 
We grudge them not, our dearest, bravest, best, — 
Let but the quarrel's issue stand confest: 
'Tis Earth's old slave-God battling for his crown 
And Freedom fighting with her visor down." 

Holmes. 



" Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil 
Amid the dust of books to find her. 
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil. 

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. 

Many in sad faith sought for her. 

Many with crossed hands sighed for her; 

But these, our brothers, fought for her. 

At life's dear peril wrought for her. 

So loved her that they died for her. 

Tasting the raptured fleetness 

Of her divine completeness: 
Their higher instinct knew 
Those love her best who to themselves are true. 
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; 

They followed her and found her 

Where all may hope to find. 
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind. 
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. 

Where faith made whole with deed 

Breathes its awakening breath 

Into the lifeless creed. 

They saw her plumed and mailed. 

With sweet, stern face unveiled. 
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death." 
Lowell, Commemoration Ode, 



HARVARD 
COxMMEMORATION SPEECH 

MR. CHAIRMAN, and Gentlemen: 
With whatever opinion we come here, I 
think it is not in man to see, without a feeling 
of pride and pleasure, a tried soldier, the armed 
defender of the right. I think that in these 
last years all opinions have been affected by 
the magnificent and stupendous spectacle which 
Divine Providence has offered us of the energies 
that slept in the children of this country, — that 
slept and have awakened. I see thankfully those 
that are here, but dim eyes in vain explore for 
some who are not. 

The old Greek Heraclitus said, " War is the 
Father of all things." He said it, no doubt, as 
science, but we of this day can repeat it as polit- 
ical and social truth. War passes the power 
of all chemical solvents, breaking up the old 
adhesions, and allowing the atoms of society to 
take a new order. It is not the Government, 
but the War, that has appointed the good 
generals, sifted out the pedants, put in the new 
and vigorous blood. The War has hfted many 
other people besides Grant and Sherman into 



342 HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

their true places. Even Divine Providence, we 
may say, always seems to work after a certain 
military necessity. Every nation punishes the 
General who is not victorious. It is a rule 
in games of chance that the cards beat all the 
players, and revolutions disconcert and outwit 
all the insurgents. 

The revolutions carry their own points, some- 
times to the ruin of those who set them on foot. 
The proof that war also is within the highest 
right, is a marked benefactor in the hands of 
the Divine Providence, is its morale. The war 
gave back integrity to this erring and immoral 
nation. It charged with power, peaceful, ami- 
able men, to whose life war and discord were 
abhorrent. What an infusion of character went 
out from this and other colleges ! What an 
infusion of character down to the ranks ! The 
experience has been uniform that it is the gentle 
soul that makes the firm hero after all. It is 
easy to recall the mood in which our young 
men, snatched from every peaceful pursuit, 
went to the war. Many of them had never 
handled a gun. They said, " It is not in me to 
resist. I go because I must. It is a duty which 
I shall never forgive myself if I decline. I do 
not know that I can make a soldier. I may be 



HARVARD COMMEMORATION 343 

very clumsy. Perhaps I shall be timid ; but you 
can rely on me. Only one thing is certain, I can 
well die, but I cannot afford to misbehave." 

In fact the infusion of culture and tender 
humanity from these scholars and idealists who 
went to the war in their own despite — God 
knows they had no fury for killing their old 
friends and countrymen — had its signal and 
lasting effect. It was found that enthusiasm 
was a more potent ally than science and muni- 
tions of war without it. " It is a principle of 
war," said Napoleon, " that when you can use 
the thunderbolt you must prefer it to the can- 
non." Enthusiasm was the thunderbolt. Here 
in this little Massachusetts, in smaller Rhode 
Island, in this little nest of New England re- 
publics it flamed out when the guilty gun was 
aimed at Sumter. 

Mr. Chairman, standing here in Harvard 
College, the parent of all the colleges ; in 
Massachusetts, the parent of all the North ; 
when I consider her influence on the country as 
a principal planter of the Western States, and 
now, by her teachers, preachers, journalists 
and books, as well as by traffic and production, 
the diffuser of religious, literary and political 
opinion; — and when I see how irresistible 



344 HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

the convictions of Massachusetts are in these 
swarming populations^ - — I think the little state 
bigger than I knew. When her blood is up, she 
has a fist big enough to knock down an empire. 
And her blood was roused. Scholars changed 
the black coat for the blue. A single company 
in the Forty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment 
contained thirty-five sons of Harvard. You all 
know as well as I the story of these dedicated 
men, who knew well on what duty they went, 
— whose fathers and mothers said of each 
slaughtered son, " We gave him up when he 
enlisted." One mother said, when her son was 
offered the command of the first negro regiment, 
" If he accepts it, I shall be as proud as if I had 
heard that he was shot.*' ' These men, thus ten- 
der, thus high-bred, thus peaceable, were always 
in the front and always employed. They might 
say, with their forefathers the old Norse Vikings, 
" We sung the mass of lances from morning 
until evening.'* And in how many cases it 
chanced, when the hero had fallen, they who 
came by night to his funeral, on the morrow 
returned to the war-path to show his slayers the 
way to death ! 

Ah ! young brothers, all honor and gratitude 
to you, — you, manly defenders. Liberty's and 



HARVARD COMMEMORATION 345 

Humanity's bodyguard ! We shall not again 
disparage America, now that we have seen what 
men it will bear. We see — we thank you for 
it — a new era, worth to mankind all the 
treasure and all the lives it has cost ; yes, 
worth to the world the lives of all this genera- 
tion of American men, if they had been de- 
manded/ 



XVII 
ADDRESS 

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 
IN CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1867 

*' They have shown what men may do. 
They have proved how men may die, — 
Count, who can, the fields they have pressed. 
Each face to the solemn sky ! ' ' 

Brownell. 



" Think you these felt no channs 
In their gray homesteads and embowered farms ? 
In household faces waiting at the door 
Their evening step should lighten up no more ? 
In fields their boyish feet had known ? 
In trees their fathers' hands had set. 
And which with them had grown. 
Widening each year their leafy coronet ? 
Felt they no pang of passionate regret 
For those unsolid goods that seem so much our own ? 
These things are dear to every man that lives. 
And life prized more for what it lends than gives. 
Yea, many a tie, through iteration sweet. 
Strove to detain their fatal feet; 
And yet the enduring half they chose. 
Whose choice decides a man life's slave or king. 
The invisible things of God before the seen and known: 
Therefore their memory inspiration blows 
With echoes gathering on from zone to zone; 
For manhood is the one immortal thing 
Beneath Time's changeful sky. 
And, where it lightened once, from age to age. 
Men come to learn, in grateful pilgrimage. 
That length of days is knowing when to die.'* 

Lowell, Concord Ode. 



ADDRESS 

DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 
IN CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1867 

FELLOW CITIZENS: The day is in 
Concord doubly our calendar day, as being 
the anniversary of the invasion of the town by 
the British troops in 1775, and of the departure 
of the company of volunteers for Washington, 
in 1861. We are all pretty well aware that the 
facts which make to us the interest of this day 
are in a great degree personal and local here ; 
that every other town and city has its own 
heroes and memorial days, and that we can 
hardly expect a wide sympathy for the names 
and anecdotes which we delight to record. 
We are glad and proud that we have no mono- 
poly of merit. We are thankful that other 
towns and cities are as rich ; that the heroes of 
old and of recent date, who made and kept 
America free and united, were not rare or soli- 
tary growths, but sporadic over vast tracts of the 
Republic. Yet, as it is a piece of nature and the 
common sense that the throbbing chord that 



350 DEDICATION OF 

holds us to our kindred, our friends and our 
town, is not to be denied or resisted, — - no mat- 
ter how frivolous or unphilosophical its pulses, 
— we shall cling affectionately to our houses, 
our river and pastures, and believe that our vis- 
itors will pardon us if we take the privilege of 
talking freely about our nearest neighbors as in 
a family party ; — well assured, meantime, that 
the virtues we are met to honor were directed on 
aims which command the sympathy of every 
loyal American citizen, were exerted for the 
protection of our common country, and aided 
its triumph. 

The town has thought fit to signify its honor 
for a few of its sons by raising an obelisk in the 
square. It is a simple pile enough, — a few slabs 
of granite, dug just below the surface of the soil, 
and laid upon the top of it ; but as we have 
learned that the upheaved mountain, from which 
these discs or flakes were broken, was once a 
glowing mass at white heat, slowly crystallized, 
then uplifted by the central fires of the globe : so 
the roots of the events it appropriately marks 
are in the heart of the universe. I shall say of 
this obelisk, planted here in our quiet plains, 
what Richter says of the volcano in the fair land- 
scape of Naples : " Vesuvius stands in this poem 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 351 

of Nature, and exalts everything, as war does the 
age. 

The art of the architect and the sense of the 
town have made these dumb stones speak ; 
have, if I may borrow the old language of the 
church, converted these elements from a secular 
to a sacred and spiritual use ; have made them 
look to the past and the future ; have given 
them a meaning for the imagination and the 
heart. The sense of the town, the eloquent in- 
scriptions the shaft now bears, the memories of 
these martyrs, the noble names which yet have 
gathered only their first fame, whatever good 
grows to the country out of the war, the largest 
results, the future power and genius of the land, 
will go on clothing this shaft with daily beauty 
and spiritual life. 'T is certain that a plain stone 
like this, standing on such memories, having 
no reference to utilities, but only to the grand 
instincts of the civil and moral man, mixes with 
surrounding nature, — by day with the changing 
seasons, by night the stars roll over it gladly, 
— becomes a sentiment, a poet, a prophet, an 
orator, to every townsman and passenger, an 
altar where the noble youth shall in all time 
come to make his secret vows.' 

The old Monument, a short half-mile from 



352 DEDICATION OF 

this house, stands to signalize the first Revolu- 
tion, where the people resisted offensive usur- 
pations, offensive taxes of the British Parliament, 
claiming that there should be no tax without 
representation. Instructed by events, after the 
quarrel began, the Americans took higher 
ground, and stood for political independence. 
But in the necessities of the hour, they over- 
looked the moral law, and winked at a practical 
exception to the Bill of Rights they had drawn 
up. They winked at the exception, believing it 
insignificant. But the moral law, the nature of 
things, did not wink at it, but kept its eye wide 
open. It turned out that this one violation was 
a subtle poison, which in eighty years corrupted 
the whole overgrown body politic, and brought 
the alternative of extirpation of the poison or 
ruin to the Republic.^ 

This new Monument is built to mark the 
arrival of the nation at the new principle, — 
say, rather, at its new acknowledgment, for the 
principle is as old as Heaven, — that only 
that state can live, in which injury to the least 
member is recognized as damage to the whole. 

Reform must begin at home. The aim of the 
hour was to reconstruct the South ; but first 
the North had to be reconstructed. Its own 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 353 

theory and practice of liberty had got sadly 
out of gear, and must be corrected. It was done 
on the instant. A thunder-storm at sea some- 
times reverses the magnets in the ship, and 
south is north. The storm of war works the like 
miracle on men. Every Democrat who went 
South came back a Republican, like the govern- 
ors who, in Buchanan's time, went to Kansas, 
and instantly took the free-state colors. War, 
says the poet, is 

*' the arduous strife. 
To which the triumph of all good is given." ' 

Every principle is a war-note. When the rights 
of man are recited under any old government, 
every one of them is a declaration of war. War 
civilizes, rearranges the population, distribut- 
ing by ideas, — the innovators on one side, the 
antiquaries on the other. It opens the eyes 
wider. Once we were patriots up to the town- 
bounds, or the state-line. But when you re- 
place the love of family or clan by a principle, 
as freedom, instantly that fire runs over the 
state-line into New Hampshire, Vermont, New 
York and Ohio, into the prairie and beyond, 
leaps the mountains, bridges river and lake, 
burns as hotly in Kansas and California as in 
Boston, and no chemist can discriminate between 

XI 



354 DEDICATION OF 

one soil and the other. It lifts every population 
to an equal power and merit. 

As long as we debate in council, both sides 
may form their private guess what the event 
may be, or which is the strongest. But the, 
moment you cry " Every man to his tent, O 
Israel ! " the delusions of hope and fear are at 
an end ; — the strength is now to be tested by 
the eternal facts. There will be no doubt more. 
The world is equal to itself The secret archi- 
tecture of things begins to disclose itself; the 
fact that all things were made on a basis of 
right ; that justice is really desired by all in- 
telligent beings ; that opposition to it is against 
the nature of things ; and that, whatever may 
happen in this hour or that, the years and the 
centuries are always pulling down the wrong 
and building up the right. 

The war made the Divine Providence cred- 
ible to many who did not believe the good 
Heaven quite honest. Every man was an abo- 
litionist by conviction, but did not believe that 
his neighbor was. The opinions of masses of 
men, which the tactics of primary caucuses and 
the proverbial timidity of trade had concealed, 
the war discovered ; and it was found, contrary 
to all popular belief, that the country was at 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 355 

heart abolitionist, and for the Union was ready 
to die. 

As cities of men are the first effects of civil- 
ization, and also instantly causes of more civ- 
ilization, so armies, which are only wandering 
cities, generate a vast heat, and lift the spirit of 
the soldiers who compose them to the boiling 
point. The armies mustered in the North were 
as much missionaries to the mind of the country 
as they were carriers of material force, and had 
the vast advantage of carrying whither they 
marched a higher civilization. Of course, there 
are noble men everywhere, and there are such 
in the South ; and the noble know the noble, 
wherever they meet ; and we have all heard 
passages of generous and exceptional behavior 
exhibited by individuals there to our officers 
and men, during the war. But the common 
people, rich or poor, were the narrowest and 
most conceited of mankind, as arrogant as the 
negroes on the Gambia River ; and, by the way, 
it looks as if the editors of the Southern press 
were in all times selected from this class. The 
invasion of Northern farmers, mechanics, engi- 
neers, tradesmen, lawyers and students did more 
than forty years of peace had done to educate 
the South.' " This will be a slow business,** 



356 DEDICATION OF 

writes our Concord captain home, " for we have 
to stop and civilize the people as we go along." 

It is an interesting part of the history, the 
manner in which this incongruous militia were 
made soldiers. That was done again on the 
Kansas plan. Our farmers went to Kansas as 
peaceable. God-fearing men as the members of 
our school committee here. But when the 
Border raids were let loose on their villages, 
these people, who turned pale at home if called 
to dress a cut finger, on witnessing the butchery- 
done by the Missouri riders on women and 
babes, were so beside themselves with rage, that 
they became on the instant the bravest soldiers 
and the most determined avengers." And the 
first events of the war of the Rebellion gave 
the like training to the new recruits. 

All sorts of men went to the war, — the 
roughs, men who liked harsh play and violence, 
men for whom pleasure was not strong enough, 
but who wanted pain, and found sphere at last 
for their superabundant energy ; then the ad- 
venturous type of New Englander, with his 
appetite for novelty and travel ; the village 
politician, who could now verify his newspaper 
knowledge, see the South, and amass what a 
stock of adventures to retail hereafter at the 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 357 

fireside, or to the well-known companions on 
the Mill-dam ; young men, also, of excellent ed- 
ucation and polished manners, delicately brought 
up ; manly farmers, skilful mechanics, young 
tradesmen, men hitherto of narrow opportuni- 
ties of knowing the world, but well taught in 
the grammar-schools. But perhaps in every one 
of these classes were idealists, men who went 
from a religious duty. I have a note of a con- 
versation that occurred in our first company, the 
morning before the battle of Bull Run. At a 
halt in the march, a few of our boys were sitting 
on a rail fence talking together whether it was 
right to sacrifice themselves. One of them said, 
* he had been thinking a good deal about it, 
last night, and he thought one was never too 
young to die for a principle.' One of our later 
volunteers, on the day when he left home, in 
reply to my question. How can you be spared 
from your farm, now that your father is so ill ? 
said : " I go because I shall always be sorry if 
I did not go when the country called me. I can 
go as well as another." One wrote to his father 
these words : " You may think it strange that 
I, who have always naturally rather shrunk 
from danger, should wish to enter the army ; 
but there is a higher Power that tunes the 



358 DEDICATION OF 

hearts of men, and enables them to see their 
duty, and gives them courage to face the dan- 
gers with which those duties are attended." 
And the captain writes home of another of his 

men, " B comes from a sense of duty and 

love of country, and these are the soldiers you 
can depend upon." ' 

None of us can have forgotten how sharp 
a test to try our peaceful people with, was the 
first call for troops. I doubt not many of our 
soldiers could repeat the confession of a youth 
whom I knew in the beginning of the war, who 
enlisted in New York, went to the field, and 
died early. Before his departure he confided to 
his sister that he was naturally a coward, but 
was determined that no one should ever find it 
out ; that he had long trained himself by forc- 
ing himself, on the suspicion of any near danger, 
to go directly up to it, cost him what struggles 
it might. Yet it is from this temperament of 
sensibility that great heroes have been formed. 

Our first company was led by an officer who 
had grown up in this village from a boy.* The 
older among us can well remember him at 
school, at play and at work, all the way up, the 
most amiable, sensible, unpretending of men ; 
fair, blond, the rose lived long in his cheek ; 



SOLDIERS* MONUMENT, CONCORD 359 

grave, but social, and one of the last men in this 
town you would have picked out for the rough 
dealing of war, — not a trace of fierceness, much 
less of recklessness, or of the devouring thirst 
for excitement ; tender as a woman in his care 
for a cough or a chilblain in his men ; had 
troches and arnica in his pocket for them. The 
army officers were welcome to their jest on 
him as too kind for a captain, and, later, as the 
colonel who got off his horse when he saw 
one of his men limp on the march, and told 
him to ride. But he knew that his men had 
found out, first that he was captain, then that 
he was colonel, and neither dared nor wished to 
disobey him. He was a man without conceit, 
who never fancied himself a philosopher or a 
saint ; the most modest and amiable of men, 
engaged in common duties, but equal always 
to the occasion ; and the war showed him still 
equal, however stern and terrible the occasion 
grew, — disclosed in him a strong good sense, 
great fertility of resource, the helping hand, and 
then the moral qualities of a commander, — a 
patience not to be tired out, a serious devotion 
to the cause of the country that never swerved, 
a hope that never failed. He was a Puritan in 
the army, with traits that remind one of John 



36o DEDICATION OF 

Brown, — an integrity incorruptible, and an 
ability that always rose to the need. 

You will remember that these colonels, cap- 
tains and lieutenants, and the privates too, are 
domestic men, just wrenched away from their 
families and their business by this rally of all 
the manhood in the land. They have notes to 
pay at home ; have farms, shops, factories, af- 
fairs of every kind to think of and write home 
about. Consider what sacrifice and havoc in 
business arrangements this war-blast made. 
They have to think carefully of every last re- 
source at home on which their wives or mothers 
may fall back ; upon the little account in the 
savings bank, the grass that can be sold, the 
old cow, or the heifer. These necessities make 
the topics of the ten thousand letters with 
which the mail-bags came loaded day by day. 
These letters play a great part in the war. The 
writing of letters made the Sunday in every 
camp : — meantime they are without the means 
of writing. After the first marches there is no 
letter-paper, there are no envelopes, no postage- 
stamps, for these were wetted into a solid mass 
in the rains and mud. Some of these letters are 
written on the back of old bills, some on brown 
paper, or strips of nev/spaper ; written by fire- 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 361 

light, making the short night shorter ; written 
on the knee, in the mud, with pencil, six words 
at a time ; or in the saddle, and have to stop 
because the horse will not stand still. But the 
words are proud and tender, — " Tell mother I 
will not disgrace her ; " " tell her not to worry 
about me, for I know she would not have had 
me stay at home if she could as well as not." 
The letters of the captain are the dearest trea- 
sures of this town. Always devoted, sometimes 
anxious, sometimes full of joy at the deport- 
ment of his comrades, they contain the sincere 
praise of men whom I now see in this assem- 
bly. If Marshal Montluc's" Memoirs are the 
Bible of soldiers, as Henry IV. of France said, 
Colonel Prescott might furnish the Book of 
Epistles. 

He writes, " You don't know how one gets 
attached to a company by living with them and 
sleeping with them all the time. I know every 
man by heart. I know every man's weak spot, 
— who is shaky, and who is true blue." He 
never remits his care of the men, aiming to 
hold them to their good habits and to keep 
them cheerful. For the first point, he keeps up 
a constant acquaintance with them ; urges their 
correspondence with their friends ; writes news 



362 DEDICATION OF 

of them home, urging his own correspondent 
to visit their families and keep them informed 
about the men ; encourages a temperance society 
which is formed in the camp. " I have not had 
a man drunk, or affected by liquor, since we 
came here." At one time he finds his company 
unfortunate in having fallen between two com- 
panies of quite another class, — " 't is profanity 
all the time ; yet instead of a bad influence on 
our men, I think it works the other way, — it 
disgusts them." 

One day he writes, " I expect to have a time, 
this forenoon, with the officer from West Point 
who drills us. He is very profane, and I will not 
stand it. If he does not stop it, I shall march my 
men right away when he is drilling them. There 
is a fine for officers swearing in the army, and 
I have too many young men that are not used 
to such talk. I told the colonel this morning 
I should do it, and shall, — don't care what the 
consequence is. This lieutenant seems to think 
that these men, who never saw a gun, can drill 
as well as he, who has been at West Point four 
years." At night he adds : " I told that officer 
from West Point, this morning, that he could 
not swear at my company as he did yesterday ; 
told him I would not stand it anyway. I told 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 363 

him I had a good many young men in my com- 
pany whose mothers asked me to look after 
them, and I should do so, and not allow them 
to hear such language, especially from an officer, 
whose duty it was to set them a better example. 
Told him I did not swear myself and would 
not allow him to. He looked at me as much as 
to say. Do you know whom you are talking to ? 
and I looked at him as much as to say, TeSy 
I do. He looked rather ashamed, but went 
through the drill without an oath." So much for 
the care of their morals. His next point is to 
keep them cheerful. 'T is better than medicine. 
He has games of baseball, and pitching quoits, 
and euchre, whilst part of the military discipline 
is sham fights. 

The best men heartily second him, and invent 
excellent means of their own. When, afterwards, 
five of these men were prisoners in the Parish 
Prison in New Orleans, they set themselves to 
use the time to the wisest advantage, — formed 
a debating-club, wrote a daily or weekly news- 
paper, called it " Stars and Stripes.*' It adver- 
tises, " prayer-meeting at 7 o'clock, in cell No. 
8, second floor," and their own printed record is 
a proud and affecting narrative. 

Whilst the regiment was encamped at Camp 



364 DEDICATION OF 

Andrew, near Alexandria, in June, 1861, march- 
ing orders came. Colonel Lawrence sent for 
eight wagons, but only three came. On these 
they loaded all the canvas of the tents, but took 
no tent-poles. 

"It looked very much like a severe thunder- 
storm," writes the captain, " and I knew the men 
would all have to sleep out of doors, unless we 
carried them. So I took six poles, and went to 
the colonel, and told him I had got the poles for 
two tents, which would cover twenty-four men, 
and unless he ordered me not to carry them, I 
should do so. He said he had no objection, only 
thought they would be too much for me. We 
only had about twelve men [the rest of the com- 
pany being, perhaps, on picket or other duty], 
and some of them have their heavy knapsacks 
and guns to carry, so could not carry any poles. 
We started and marched two miles without stop- 
ping to rest, not having had anything to eat, and 
being very hot and dry." At this time Captain 
Prescott was daily threatened with sickness, and 
suffered the more from this heat, " I told Lieu- 
tenant Bowers, this morning, that I could afford 
to be sick from bringing the tent-poles, for it 
saved the whole regiment from sleeping out- 
doors ; for they would not have thought of it, if 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 365 

I had not taken mine. The major had tried to 
discourage me ; — said, ' perhaps, if I carried 
them over, some other company would get 
them ;' — I told him, perhaps he did not think 
I was smart." He had the satisfaction to see 
the whole regiment enjoying the protection of 
these tents.' 

In the disastrous battle of Bull Run this com- 
pany behaved well, and the regimental officers 
believed, what is now the general conviction of 
the country, that the misfortunes of the day were 
not so much owing to the fault of the troops as 
to the insufficiency of the combinations by the 
general officers. It happened, also, that the Fifth 
Massachusetts was almost unofficered. The 
colonel was, early in the day, disabled by a 
casualty ; the lieutenant-colonel, the major and 
the adjutant were already transferred to new regi- 
ments, and their places were not yet filled. The 
three months of the enlistment expired a few 
days after the battle. 

In the fall of 1861, the old artillery company 
of this town was reorganized, and Captain Rich- 
ard Barrett received a commission in March, 
1862, from the state, as its commander. This 
company, chiefly recruited here, was later em- 
bodied in the Forty-seventh Regiment, Massa- 



366 DEDICATION OF 

chusetts Volunteers, enlisted as nine months* 
men, and sent to New Orleans, where they were 
employed in guard duty during their term of 
service. Captain Humphrey H. Buttrick, lieu- 
tenant in this regiment, as he had been already 
lieutenant in Captain Prescott's company in 
1 86 1, went out again in August, 1864, a captain 
in the Fifty-ninth Massachusetts, and saw hard 
service in the Ninth Corps, under General Burn- 
side. The regiment being formed of veterans, 
and in fields requiring great activity and expo- 
sure, suffered extraordinary losses ; Captain But- 
trick and one other officer being the only officers 
in it who were neither killed, wounded nor cap- 
tured." In August, 1862, on the new requisition 
for troops, when it was becoming difficult to meet 
the draft, — mainly through the personal exam- 
ple and influence of Mr. Sylvester Lovejoy, 
twelve men, including himself, were enlisted for 
three years, and, being soon after enrolled in the 
Fortieth Massachusetts, went to the war ; and 
a very good account has been heard, not only 
of the regiment, but of the talents and virtues of 
these men. 

After the return of the three months' com- 
pany to Concord, in 1861, Captain Prescott 
raised a new company of volunteers, and Cap- 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 367 

tain Bowers another. Each of these companies 
included recruits from this town, and they 
formed part of the Thirty-second Regiment of 
Massachusetts Volunteers. Enlisting for three 
years, and remaining to the end of the war, 
these troops saw every variety of hard service 
which the war offered, and, though suffering at 
first some disadvantage from change of com- 
manders, and from severe losses, they grew at 
last, under the command of Colonel Prescott, 
to an excellent reputation, attested by the 
names of the thirty battles they were author- 
ized to inscribe on their flag, and by the im- 
portant position usually assigned them in the 
field. 

I have found many notes of their rough 
experience in the march and in the field. In 
McClellan*s retreat in the Peninsula, in July, 
1862, "it is all our men can do to draw their 
feet out of the mud. We marched one mile 
through mud, without exaggeration, one foot 
deep, — a good deal of the way over my boots, 
and with short rations ; on one day nothing 
but liver, blackberries, and pennyroyal tea.'* — 
" At Fredericksburg we lay eleven hours in 
one spot without moving, except to rise and 
fire.** The next note is, " cracker for a day and 



368 DEDICATION OF 

a half, — but all right." Another day, '' had 
not left the ranks for thirty hours, and the 
nights were broken by frequent alarms. How 
would Concord people," he asks, " Hke to pass 
the night on the battle-field, and hear the dying 
cry for help, and not be able to go to them ? " 
But the regiment did good service at Harri- 
son^s Landing, and at Antietam, under Colonel 
Parker ; and at Fredericksburg, in December, 
Lieutenant-Colonel Prescott loudly expressed 
his satisfaction at his comrades, now and then 
particularizing names : " Bowers, Shepard and 
Lauriat are as brave as lions." ' 

At the battle of Gettysburg, in July, 1863, 
the brigade of which the Thirty-second Regi- 
ment formed a part, was in Une of battle seventy- 
two hours, and suffered severely. Colonel 
Prescott's regiment went in with two hundred 
and ten men, nineteen officers. On the second 
of July they had to cross the famous wheat- 
field, under fire from the rebels in front and 
on both flanks. Seventy men were killed or 
wounded out of seven companies. Here 
Francis Buttrick, whose manly beauty all of us 
remember,^ and Sergeant Appleton, an excellent 
soldier, were fatally wounded. The Colonel 
was hit by three bullets. " I feel," he writes, 



SOLDIERS* MONUMENT, CONCORD 369 

" I have much to be thankful for that my life 
is spared, although I would willingly die to 
have the regiment do as well as they have done. 
Our colors had several holes made, and were 
badly torn. One bullet hit the staff which the 
bearer had in his hand. The color-bearer is 
brave as a lion ; he will go anywhere you say, 
and no questions asked ; his name is Marshall 
Davis." The Colonel took evident pleasure in 
the fact that he could account for all his men. 
There were so many killed, so many wounded, 
— but no missing. For that word " missing " 
was apt to mean skulking. Another incident : 
"A friend of Lieutenant Barrow complains that 
we did not treat his body with respect, inasmuch 
as we did not send it home. I think we were 
very fortunate to save it at all, for in ten 
minutes after he was killed the rebels occupied 
the ground, and we had to carry him and all 
our wounded nearly two miles in blankets. 
There was no place nearer than Baltimore 
where we could have got a coffin, and I sup- 
pose it was eighty miles there. We laid him in 
two double blankets, and then sent off a long 
distance and got boards off a barn to make the 
best coffin we could, and gave him burial." 
After Gettysburg, Colonel Prescott remarks 



XI 



370 DEDICATION OF 

that our regiment is highly complimented. 
When Colonel Gurney, of the Ninth, came to 
him the next day to tell him that " folks are 
just beginning to appreciate the Thirty-second 
Regiment : it always was a good regiment, and 
people are just beginning to find it out ; " Col- 
onel Prescott notes in his journal, — " Pity they 
have not found it out before it was all gone. 
We have a hundred and seventy-seven guns 
this morning." 

Let me add an extract from the official report 
of the brigade commander : " Word was sent 
by General Barnes, that, when we retired, we 
should fall back under cover of the woods. 
This order was communicated to Colonel Pres- 
cott, whose regiment was then under the hottest 
fire. Understanding it to be a peremptory 
order to retire then, he replied, * I don't want 
to retire ; I am not ready to retire ; I can hold 
this place ; * and he made good his assertion. 
Being informed that he misunderstood the 
order, which was only to inform him how to 
retire when it became necessary, he was satis- 
fied, and he and his command held their ground 
manfully." It was said that Colonel Prescott's 
reply, when reported, pleased the Acting-Briga- 
dier-General Sweitzer mightily. 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 371 

After Gettysburg, the Thirty-second Regi- 
ment saw hard service at Rappahannock Sta- 
tion ; and at Baltimore, in Virginia, where they 
were drawn up in battle order for ten days suc- 
cessively : crossing the Rapidan, and suffering 
from such extreme cold, a few days later, at 
Mine Run, that the men were compelled to 
break rank and run in circles to keep them- 
selves from being frozen. On the third of 
December, they went into winter quarters. 

I must not follow the multiplied details that 
make the hard work of the next year. But the 
campaign in the Wilderness surpassed all their 
worst experience hitherto of the soldier's life. 
On the third of May, they crossed the Rapidan 
for the fifth time. On the twelfth, at Laurel 
Hill, the regiment had twenty-one killed and 
seventy-five wounded, including five officers. 
" The regiment has been in the front and centre 
since the battle'begun, eight and a half days ago, 
and is now building breastworks on the Freder- 
icksburg road. This has been the hardest fight 
the world ever knew. I think the loss of our 
army will be forty thousand. Every day, for the 
last eight days, there has been a terrible battle 
the whole length of the line. One day they 
drove us ; but it has been regular bull-dog fight- 



372 DEDICATION OF 

ing." On the twenty-first, they had been, for 
seventeen days and nights, under arms without 
rest. On the twenty-third, they crossed the 
North Anna, and achieved a great success. On 
the thirtieth, we learn, " Our regiment has never 
been in the second line since we crossed the 
Rapidan, on the third.'* On the night of the 
thirtieth, — " The hardest day we ever had. We 
have been in the first line twenty-six days, and 
fighting every day but two ; whilst your news- 
papers talk of the inactivity of the Army of the 
Potomac. If those writers could be here and 
fight all day, and sleep in the trenches, and be 
called up several times in the night by picket- 
firing, they would not call it inactive.'' June 
fourth is marked in the diary .as " An awful 
day ; — two hundred men lost to the command ; *' 
and not until the fifth of June comes at last a 
respite for a short space, during which the men 
drew shoes and socks, and the officers were able 
to send to the wagons and procure a change of 
clothes, for the first time in ^ve weeks. 

But from these incessant labors there was 
now to be rest for one head, — the honored and 
beloved commander of the regiment. On the 
sixteenth of June, they crossed the James River, 
and marched to within three miles of Petersburg. 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 373 

Early in the morning of the eighteenth they went 
to the front, formed line of battle, and were or- 
dered to take the Norfolk and Petersburg Rail- 
road from the rebels. In this charge. Colonel 
George L. Prescott was mortally wounded. 
After driving the enemy from the railroad, cross- 
ing it, and climbing the farther bank to continue 
the charge, he was struck, in front of his com- 
mand, by a musket-ball which entered his breast 
near the heart. He was carried off the field to 
the division hospital, and died on the following 
morning. On his death-bed, he received the 
needless assurances of his general that " he had 
done more than all his duty," — needless to a 
conscience so faithful and unspotted. One of his 
townsmen and comrades, a sergeant in his regi- 
ment, writing to his own family, uses these 
words : " He was one of the few men who fight 
for principle. He did not fight for glory, honor, 
nor money, but because he thought it his duty. 
These are not my feelings only, but of the whole 
regiment." 

On the first of January, 1865, the Thirty- 
second Regiment made itself comfortable in log 
huts, a mile south of our rear line of works 
before Petersburg. On the fourth of February, 
sudden orders came to move next morning at 



374 DEDICATION OF 

daylight. At Dabney's Mills, in a sharp fight, 
they lost seventy-four in killed, wounded and 
missing. Here Major Shepard was taken pris- 
oner. The lines were held until the tenth, with 
more than usual suffering from snow and hail 
and intense cold, added to the annoyance of the 
artillery fire. On the first of April, the regiment ' 
connected with Sheridan's cavalry, near the Five 
Forks, and took an important part in that battle 
which opened Petersburg and Richmond, and 
forced the surrender of Lee. On the ninth, they 
marched in support of the cavalry, and were 
advancing in a grand charge, when the white 
flag of General Lee appeared. The brigade of 
which the Thirty-second Regiment formed part 
was detailed to receive the formal surrender of 
the rebel arms. The homeward march began 
on the thirteenth, and the regiment was mustered 
out in the field, at Washington, on the twenty- 
eighth of June, and arrived in Boston on the 
first of July. 

Fellow citizens : The obelisk records only the 
names of the dead. There is something partial 
in this distribution of honor. Those who went 
through those dreadful fields and returned not 
deserve much more than all the honor we can 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 375 

pay. But those also who went through the same 
fields, and returned alive, put just as much at 
hazard as those who died, and, in other countries, 
would wear distinctive badges of honor as long as 
they lived. I hope the disuse of such medals or 
badges in this country only signifies that every- 
body knows these men, and carries their deeds 
in such lively remembrance that they require no 
badge or reminder. I am sure I need not be- 
speak your gratitude to these fellow citizens and 
neighbors of ours. I hope they will be content 
with the laurels of one war. 

But let me, in behalf of this assembly, speak 
directly to you, our defenders, and say, that it 
is easy to see that if danger should ever threaten 
the homes which you guard, the knowledge of 
your presence will be a wall of fire for their pro- 
tection. Brave men ! you will hardly be called 
to see again fields as terrible as those you have 
already trampled with your victories. 

There are people who can hardly read the 
names on yonder bronze tablet, the mist so 
gathers in their eyes. Three of the names are of 
sons of one family.' A gloom gathers on this 
assembly, composed as it is of kindred men and 
women, for, in many houses, the dearest and 
noblest is gone from their hearth-stone. Yet it 



376 DEDICATION OF 

is tinged with light from heaven. A duty so 
severe has been discharged, and with such im- 
mense results of good, lifting private sacrifice to 
the sublime, that, though the cannon volleys 
have a sound of funeral echoes, they can yet hear 
through them the benedictions of their country 
and mankind. 



APPENDIX 

In the above Address I have been compelled to 
suppress more details of personal interest than 
I have used. But I do not like to omit the tes- 
timony to the character of the Commander of 
the Thirty-second Massachusetts Regiment, 
given in the following letter by one of his 
soldiers : — 

Near Petersburg, Virginia, 
June 20, 1864. 

Dear Father : 

With feelings of deep regret, I inform you that 
Colonel Prescott, our brave and lamented leader, is no 
more. He was shot through the body, near the heart, 
on the eighteenth day of June, and died the following 
morning. On the morning of the eighteenth, our 
division was not in line. Reveille was at an early hour. 



SOLDIERS* MONUMENT, CONCORD 377 

and before long we were moving to the front. Soon 
we passed the ground where the Ninth Corps drove 
the enemy from their fortified lines, and came upon and 
formed our line in rear of Crawford's Division. In 
front of us, and one mile distant, the Rebels* lines of 
works could be seen. Between us and them, and in a 
deep gulley, was the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad. 
Soon the order came for us to take the railroad from 
the enemy, whose advance then held it. Four regi- 
ments of our brigade were to head the charge ; so the 
32d Massachusetts, 62d, 91st and 155th Pennsylvania 
regiments, under command of Colonel Gregory, moved 
forward in good order, the enemy keeping up a steady 
fire all the time. All went well till we reached the 
road. The Rebels left when they saw us advance, 
and, when we reached the road, they were running 
away. But here our troubles began. The banks, on 
each side of the road, were about thirty feet high, 
and, being stiff clay, were nearly perpendicular. We 
got down well enough, because we got started, and 
were rolled to the bottom, a confused pile of Yanks. 
Now to climb the other side ! It was impossible to 
get up by climbing, for the side of it was like the 
side of a house. By dint of getting on each other's 
shoulders and making holes for our feet with bayonets, 
a few of us got up ; reaching our guns down to the 
others, we all finally got over. Meanwhile, a storm of 
bullets was rained upon us. Through it all. Colonel 
Prescott was cool and pollected, encouraging the men 



378 DEDICATION OF 

to do their best. After we were almost all across, he 
moved out in front of the line, and called the men out 
to him, saying, " Come on, men ; form our line here.** 
The color-bearer stepped towards him, when a bullet 
struck the Colonel, passed through him, and wounded 
the color-bearer. Sergeant Giles of Company G. 
Calmly the Colonel turned, and said," I am wounded; 
some one help me off.'* A sergeant of Company B, 
and one of the 2ist Pennsylvania, helped him off. 
This man told me, last night, aH that the Colonel 
said, while going off. He was afraid we would be 
driven back, and wanted these men to stick by him. 
He said, " I die for my country.** He seemed to be 
conscious that death was near to him, and said the 
wound was near his heart ; wanted the sergeant of 
Company B to write to his family, and tell them all 
about him. He will write to Mrs. Prescott, probably ; 
but if they do not hear from some one an account of 
his death, I wish you would show this to Mrs. Pres- 
cott. He died in the division hospital, night before last, 
and his remains will probably be sent to Concord. We 
lament his loss in the regiment very much. He was 
like a father to us, — always counselling us to be firm 
in the path of duty, and setting the example himself. I 
think a more moral man, or one more likely to enter 
the kingdom of heaven, cannot be found in the Army 
of the Potomac. No man ever heard him swear, or 
saw him use liquor, since we were in the service. I 
wish there was some way for the regiment to pay some 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, CONCORD 379 

tribute to his memory. But the folks at home must do 
this for the present. The Thirty-second Regiment 
has lost its leader, and calls on the people of Concord 
to console the afflicted family of the brave departed, by 
showing their esteem for him in some manner. He was 
one of the few men who fight for principle, — pure 
principle. He did not fight for glory, honor nor money 
but because he thought it his duty. These are not 
my feelings only, but of the whole regiment. I want 
you to show this to every one, so they can see what 
we thought of the Colonel, and how he died in front 
of his regiment. God bless and comfort his poor 
family. Perhaps people think soldiers have no feeling, 
but it is not so. We feel deep anxiety for the families 
of all our dear comrades. 

Charles Bartlett, 
Sergeant Company G, j2d Mass. Vols,^ 



XVIII 
EDITORS' ADDRESS 

MASSACHUSETTS QUARTERLY REVIEW, DECEMBER, 1847 



The old men studied magic in the flowers. 

And human fortunes in astronomy. 

And an omnipotence in chemistry. 

Preferring things to names, for these were men. 

Were unitarians of the united world. 

And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell. 

They caught the footsteps of the Same. Our eyes 

Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars. 

And strangers to the mystic beast and bird. 

And strangers to the plant and to the mine. 

The injured elements say, * Not in us ; ' 

And night and day, ocean and continent. 

Fire, plant and mineral say, * Not in us ; * 

And haughtily return us stare for stare. 

For we invade them impiously for gain; 

We devastate them unreligiously. 

And coldly ask their pottage, not their love. 

Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us 

Only what to our griping toil is due; 

But the sweet affluence of love and song. 

The rich results of the divine consents 

Of man and earth, of world beloved and loved. 

The nectar and ambrosia are withheld. 



EDITORS' ADDRESS 

THE American people are fast opening 
their own destiny. The material basis is 
of such extent that no folly of man can quite 
subvert it ; for the territory is a considerable 
fraction of the planet, and the population neither 
loath nor inexpert to use their advantages. Add, 
that this energetic race derive an unprecedented 
material power from the new arts, from the ex- 
pansions effected by public schools, cheap post- 
age and a cheap press, from the telescope, the 
telegraph, the railroad, steamship, steam-ferry, 
steam-mill ; from domestic architecture, chem- 
ical agriculture, from ventilation, from ice, ether, 
caoutchouc, and innumerable inventions and 
manufactures. 

A scholar who has been reading of the fabu- 
lous magnificence of Assyria and Persia, of 
Rome and Constantinople, leaves his library 
and takes his seat in a railroad-car, where he is 
importuned by newsboys with journals still wet 
from Liverpool and Havre, with telegraphic 
despatches not yet fifty minutes old from Buf- 
falo and Cincinnati. At the screams of the 
steam-whistle, the train quits city and suburbs. 



384 EDITORS' ADDRESS 

darts away into the interior, drops every man 
at his estate as it whirls along, and shows our 
traveller what tens of thousands of powerful 
and weaponed men, science-armed and society- 
armed, sit at large in this ample region, obscure 
from their numbers and the extent of the 
domain. He reflects on the power which each 
of these plain republicans can employ; how far 
these chains of intercourse and travel reach, 
interlock and ramify ; what levers, what pumps, 
what exhaustive analyses are applied to Nature 
for the benefit of masses of men. Then he 
exclaims. What a negro-fine royalty is that of 
Jamschid and Solomon ! What a substantial 
sovereignty does my townsman possess ! A 
man who has a hundred dollars to dispose of 

— a hundred dollars over his bread — is rich 
beyond the dreams of the Caesars. 

Keep our eyes as long as we can on this pic- 
ture, we cannot stave off the ulterior question, 

— the famous question of Cineas to Pyrrhus,' — 
the WHERE TO of all this power and population, 
these surveys and inventions, this taxing and 
tabulating, mill-privilege, roads, and mines. 
The aspect this country presents is a certain 
maniacal activity, an immense apparatus of 
cunning machinery which turns out, at last, 



EDITORS' ADDRESS 385 

some Nuremberg toys. Has it generated, as 
great interests do, any intellectual power ? 
Where are the works of the imagination — the 
surest test of a national genius ? At least as far 
as the purpose and genius of America is yet 
reported in any book, it is a sterility and no 
genius. 

One would say there is nothing colossal in 
the country but its geography and its material 
activities ; that the moral and intellectual effects 
are not on the same scale with the trade and 
production. There is no speech heard but that 
of auctioneers, newsboys, and the caucus. 
Where is the great breath of the New World, 
the voice of aboriginal nations opening new 
eras with hymns of lofty cheer ? Our books 
and fine arts are imitations ; there is a fatal in- 
curiosity and disinclination in our educated men 
to new studies and the interrogation of Nature. 
We have taste, critical talent, good professors, 
good commentators, but a lack of male energy. 
What more serious calamity can befall a people 
than a constitutional dulness and limitation ? 
The moral influence of the intellect is wanting. 
We hearken in vain for any profound voice 
speaking to the American heart, cheering timid 
good men, animating the youth, consoling the 

XI 



386 EDITORS' ADDRESS 

defeated, and intelligently announcing duties 
which clothe life with joy, and endear the face 
of land and sea to men." It is a poor considera- 
tion that the country wit is precocious, and, as 
we say, practical ; that poHtical interests on so 
broad a scale as ours are administered by little 
men with some saucy village talent, by deft 
partisans, good cipherers ; strict economists, 
quite empty of all superstition. 

Conceding these unfavorable appearances, it 
would yet be a poor pedantry to read the fates 
of this country from these narrow data. On the 
contrary, we are persuaded that moral and ma- 
terial values are always commensurate. Every 
material organization exists to a moral end, 
which makes the reason of its existence. Here 
are no books, but who can see the continent 
with its inland and surrounding waters, its 
temperate climates, its west-wind breathing 
vigor through all the year, its confluence of 
races so favorable to the highest energy, and 
the infinite glut of their production, without 
putting new queries to Destiny as to the pur- 
pose for which this muster of nations and this 
sudden creation of enormous values is made ? 

This is equally the view of science and of 
patriotism. We hesitate to employ a word so 



EDITORS' ADDRESS 387 

much abused as patriotism, whose true sense 
is almost the reverse of its popular sense. We 
have no sympathy with that boyish egotism, 
hoarse with cheering for one side, for one state, 
for one town : the right patriotism consists in 
the delight which springs from contributing our 
peculiar and legitimate advantages to the bene- 
fit of humanity. Every foot of soil has its 
proper quality ; the grape on two sides of the 
same fence has new flavors ; and so every acre 
on the globe, every family of men, every point 
of climate, has its distinguishing virtues. Cer- 
tainly then this country does not lie here in the 
sun causeless ; and though it may not be easy to 
define its influence, men feel already its eman- 
cipating quality in the careless self-reliance of 
the manners, in the freedom of thought, in the 
direct roads by which grievances are reached 
and redressed, and even in the reckless and sin- 
ister politics, not less than in purer expressions. 
Bad as it is, this freedom leads onward and 
upward, — to a Columbia of thought and art, 
which is the last and endless end of Columbus's 
adventure. 

Lovers of our country, but not always approv- 
ers of the public counsels, we should certainly be 
glad to give good advice in politics. We have not 



388 EDITORS' ADDRESS 

been able to escape our national and endemic 
habit, and to be liberated from interest in the 
elections and in public affairs. Nor have we 
cared to disfranchise ourselves. We are more 
solicitous than others to make our politics clear 
and healthful, as we believe politics to be nowise 
accidental or exceptional, but subject to the same 
laws with trees, earths and acids. We see that 
reckless and destructive fury which characterizes 
the lower classes of American society, and which 
is pampered by hundreds of profligate presses. 
The young intriguers who drive in bar-rooms 
and town-meetings the trade of politics, saga- 
cious only to seize the victorious side, have put 
the country into the position of an overgrown 
bully, and Massachusetts finds no heart or head 
to give weight and efficacy to her contrary judg- 
ment. In hours when it seemed only to need one 
just word from a man of honor to have vindi- 
cated the rights of millions, and to have given a 
true direction to the first steps of a nation, we 
have seen the best understandings of New Eng- 
land, the trusted leaders of her counsels, consti- 
tuting a snivelling and despised opposition, 
clapped on the back by comfortable capitalists 
from all sections, and persuaded to say. We are 
too old to stand for what is called a New England 



EDITORS' ADDRESS 389 

sentiment any longer. Rely on us for commer- 
cial representatives, but for questions of ethics, 
— who knows what markets may be opened? 
We are not well, we are not in our seats, when 
justice and humanity are to be spoken for. 

We have a bad war, many victories, each of 
which converts the country into an immense 
chanticleer ; and a very insincere political oppo- 
sition/ The country needs to be extricated from 
its delirium at once. Public affairs are chained 
in the same law with private ; the retributions 
of armed states are not less sure and signal than 
those which come to private felons. The facility 
of majorities is no protection from the natural 
sequence of their own acts. Men reason badly, 
but Nature and Destiny are logical.' 

But, whilst we should think our pains well be- 
stowed if we could cure the infatuation of states- 
men, and should be sincerely pleased if we could 
give a direction to the Federal politics, we are far 
from believing politics the primal interest of 
men. On the contrary, we hold that the laws and 
governors cannot possess a commanding inter- 
est for any but vacant or fanatical people ; for 
the reason that this is simply a formal and super- 
ficial interest ; and men of a solid genius are only 
interested in substantial things. 



390 EDITORS* ADDRESS 

The State, like the individual, should rest on 
an ideal basis. Not only man but Nature is in- 
jured by the imputation that man exists only to 
be fattened with bread, but he lives in such con- 
nection with Thought and Fact that his bread 
is surely involved as one element thereof, but is 
not its end and aim. So the insight which com- 
mands the laws and conditions of the true polity 
precludes forever all interest in the squabbles of 
parties. As soon as men have tasted the enjoy- 
ment of learning, friendship and virtue, for which 
the State exists, the prizes of office appear pol- 
luted, and their followers outcasts. 

A journal that would meet the real wants of 
this time must have a courage and power suffi- 
cient to solve the problems which the great grop- 
ing society around us, stupid with perplexity, is 
dumbly exploring. Let it now show its astute- 
ness by dodging each difficult question and argu- 
ing diffusely every point on which men are long 
ago unanimous. Can it front this matter of So- 
cialism, to which the names of Owen and Fourier 
have attached, and dispose of that question ? 
Will it cope with the allied questions of Govern- 
ment, Nonresistance, and all that belongs under 
that category ? Will it measure itself with the 
chapter on Slavery, in some sort the special 



EDITORS' ADDRESS 391 

enigma of the time, as it has provoked against it 
a sort of inspiration and enthusiasm singular in 
modern history ? There are literary and philo- 
sophical reputations to settle. The name of 
Swedenborg has in this very time acquired new 
honors, and the current year has witnessed the 
appearance, in their first English translation, of 
his manuscripts. Here is an unsettled account 
in the book of Fame ; a nebula to dim eyes, but 
which great telescopes may yet resolve into a 
magnificent system. Here is the standing pro- 
blem of Natural Science, and the merits of her 
great interpreters to be determined ; the ency- 
clopaedical Humboldt, and the intrepid general- 
izations collected by the author of the Vestiges 
of Creation. Here is the balance to be adjusted 
between the exact French school of Cuvier, and 
the genial catholic theorists, GeofFroy St.-Hilaire, 
Goethe, Davy and Agassiz. Will it venture into 
the thin and difficult air of that school where the 
secrets of structure are discussed under the topics 
of mesmerism and the twilights of demonology ? 
What will easily seem to many a far higher 
question than any other is that which respects 
the embodying of the Conscience of the period. 
Is the age we live in unfriendly to the highest 
powers ; to that blending of the affections with 



392 EDITORS' ADDRESS 

the poetic faculty which has distinguished the 
Religious Ages ? We have a better opinion of 
the economy of Nature than to fear that those 
varying phases which humanity presents ever 
leave out any of the grand springs of human 
action. Mankind for the moment seem to be 
in search of a religion. The Jewish cultus is 
declining ; the Divine, or, as some will say, the 
truly Human, hovers, now seen, now unseen, 
before us. This period of peace, this hour when 
the jangle of contending churches is hushing or 
hushed, will seem only the more propitious to 
those who believe that man need not fear the 
want of religion, because they know his religious 
constitution, — that he must rest on the moral 
and religious sentiments, as the motion of 
bodies rests on geometry. In the rapid decay 
of what was called religion, timid and unthink- 
ing people fancy a decay of the hope of man. 
But the moral and religious sentiments meet 
us everywhere, alike in markets as in churches. 
A God starts up behind cotton bales also. The 
conscience of man is regenerated as is the at- 
mosphere, so that society cannot be debauched. 
The health which we call Virtue is an equipoise 
which easily redresses itself, and resembles 
those rocking stones which a child^s finger can 



EDITORS' ADDRESS 393 

move, and a weight of many hundred tons can- 
not overthrow. 

With these convictions, a few friends of good 
letters have thought fit to associate themselves 
for the conduct of a new journal. We have 
obeyed the custom and convenience of the time 
in adopting this form of a Review, as a mould 
into which all metal most easily runs. But the 
form shall not be suffered to be an impediment. 
The name might convey the impression of a 
book of criticism, and that nothing is to be 
found here which was not written expressly for 
the Review ; but good readers know that in- 
spired pages are not written to fill a space, but 
for inevitable utterance ; and to such our jour- 
nal is freely and solicitously open, even though 
everything else be excluded. We entreat the aid 
of every lover of truth and right, and let these 
principles entreat for us. We rely on the talents 
and industry of good men known to us, but 
much more on the magnetism of truth, which 
is multiplying and educating advocates for itself 
and friends for us. We rely on the truth for 
and against ourselves. 



XIX 
ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 

AT CONCORD, MAY ii, 185a 



God said, I am tired of kings, 
I suffer them no more; 
Up to my ear the morning brings 
The outrage of the poor. 

My angel, — his name is Freedom, — 
Choose him to be your king; 
He shall cut pathways east and west. 
And fend you with his wing. 



ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 

SIR, — The fatigue of your many public 
visits, in such unbroken succession as may 
compare with the toils of a campaign, forbid us 
to detain you long. The people of this town 
share with their countrymen the admiration of 
valor and perseverance ; they, like their com- 
patriots, have been hungry to see the man whose 
extraordinary eloquence is seconded by the 
splendor and the solidity of his actions. But, 
as it is the privilege of the people of this town 
to keep a hallowed mound which has a place in 
the story of the country ; as Concord is one of 
the monuments of freedom ; we knew before- 
hand that you could not go by us ; you could 
not take all your steps in the pilgrimage of 
American liberty, until you had seen with your 
eyes the ruins of the bridge where a handful of 
brave farmers opened our Revolution. There- 
fore, we sat and waited for you. 

And now. Sir, we are heartily glad to see you, 
at last, in these fields. We set no more value 
than you do on cheers and huzzas. But we 
think that the graves of our heroes around us 
throb to-day to a footstep that sounded like 
their own: — 



398 ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 

" The mighty tread 
Brings from the dust the sound of liberty.*' ^ 

Sir, we have watched with attention your 
progress through the land, and the varying feel- 
ing with which you have been received, and 
the unvarying tone and countenance which you 
have maintained. We wish to discriminate in 
our regard. We wish to reserve our honor for 
actions of the noblest strain. We please our- 
selves that in you we meet one whose temper 
was long since tried in the fire, and made equal 
to all events ; a man so truly in love with the 
greatest future, that he cannot be diverted to 
any less. 

It is our republican doctrine, too, that the 
wide variety of opinions is an advantage. I 
believe I may say of the people of this country 
at large, that their sympathy is more worth, 
because it stands the test of party. It is not a 
blind wave ; it is a living soul contending with 
living souls. It is, in every expression, antago- 
nized. No opinion will pass but must stand 
the tug of war. As you see, the love you win 
is worth something ; for it has been argued 
through ; its foundation searched ; it has proved 
sound and whole ; it may be avowed ; it will 
last, and it will draw all opinion to itself. 



ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 399 

We have seen, with great pleasure, that there 
is nothing accidental in your attitude. We have 
seen that you are organically in that cause you 
plead. The man of Freedom, you are also the 
man of Fate. You do not elect, but you are 
elected by God and your genius to the task. 
We do not, therefore, affect to thank you. We 
only see in you the angel of freedom, crossing 
sea and land ; crossing parties, nationalities, 
private interests and self-esteems ; dividing 
populations where you go, and drawing to your 
part only the good. We are afraid that you are 
growing popular. Sir ; you may be called to the 
dangers of prosperity. But, hitherto, you have 
had in all centuries and in all parties only the 
men of heart. I do not know but you will have 
the million yet. Then, may your strength be 
equal to your day. But remember. Sir, that 
everything great and excellent in the world is 
in minorities.' 

Far be from us. Sir, any tone of patronage ; 
we ought rather to ask yours. We know the 
austere condition of liberty — that it must be 
reconquered over and over again ; yea, day by 
day ; that it is a state of war ; that it is always 
slipping from those who boast it to those who 
fight for it : and you, the foremost soldier of 



400 ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 

freedom in this age, — it is for us to crave your 
judgment ; who are we that we should dictate 
to you ? You have won your own. We only 
affirm it. This country of workingmen greets 
in you a worker. This republic greets in you 
a republican. We only say, * Well done, good 
and faithful.' — You have earned your own 
nobility at home. We admit you ad eundem 
(as they say at College). We admit you to the 
same degree, without new trial. We suspend 
all rules before so paramount a merit. You may 
well sit a doctor in the college of liberty. You 
have achieved your right to interpret our Wash- 
ington. And I speak the sense not only of every 
generous American, but the law of mind, when 
I say that it is not those who live idly in the 
city called after his name, but those who, all 
over the world, think and act like him, who 
can claim to explain the sentiment of Wash- 
ington. 

Sir, whatever obstruction from selfishness, 
indifference, or from property (which always 
sympathizes with possession) you may encoun- 
ter, we congratulate you that you have known 
how to convert calamities into powers, exile 
into a campaign, present defeat into lasting vic- 
tory. For this new crusade which you preach 



ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 401 

to willing and to unwilling ears in America is a 
seed of armed men. You have got your story- 
told in every palace and log hut and prairie 
camp, throughout this continent. And, as the 
shores of Europe and America approach every 
month, and their politics will one day mingle, 
when the crisis arrives it will find us all in- 
structed beforehand in the rights and wrongs of 
Hungary, and parties already to her freedom. 



XX 

WOMAN 

A LECTURE READ BEFORE THE WOMAN'S RIGHTS 
CONVENTION, BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 20, 1855 

The politics are base. 

The letters do not cheer. 
And 't is far in the deeps of history. 

The voice that speaketh clear. 

Yet there in the parlor sits 

Some figure in noble guise, — 

Our Angel in a stranger's form; 
Or Woman's pleading eyes. 



■* Lo, when the Lord made North and South, 
And sun and moon ordained he. 
Forth bringing each by word of mouth 

In order of its dignity. 
Did man from the crude clay express 
By sequence, and, all else decreed. 
He formed the woman; nor might less 
Than Sabbath such a work succeed." 

Coventry Patmore. 



WOMAN 

AMONG those movements which seem to 
be, now and then, endemic in the public 
mind, — perhaps we should say, sporadic, — 
rather than the single inspiration of one mind, is 
that which has urged on society the benefits of 
action having for its object a benefit to the po- 
sition of Woman. And none is more seriously 
interesting to every healthful and thoughtful 
mind. 

In that race which is now predominant over 
all the other races of men, it was a cherished be- 
lief that women had an oracular nature. They 
are more delicate than men, — delicate as iodine 
to light, — and thus more impressionable. They 
are the best index of the coming hour. I 
share this belief. I think their words are to be 
weighed ; but it is their inconsiderate word, — 
according to the rule, ' take their first advice, 
not the second : * as Coleridge was wont to 
apply to a lady for her judgment in questions of 
taste, and accept it ; but when she added — "I 
think so, because — " " Pardon me, madam," 
he said, " leave me to find out the reasons for 
myself." In this sense, as more delicate mer- 



406 WOMAN 

curies of the imponderable and immaterial influ- 
ences, what they say and think is the shadow 
of coming events. Their very dolls are indic- 
ative. Among our Norse ancestors, Frigga was 
worshipped as the goddess of women. " Weirdes 
all," said the Edda, " Frigga knoweth, though 
she telleth them never." That is to say, all wis- 
doms Woman knows ; though she takes them 
for granted, and does not explain them as dis- 
coveries, like the understanding of man. Men 
remark figure : women always catch the expres- 
sion. They inspire by a look, and pass with us 
not so much by what they say or do, as by 
their presence. They learn so fast and convey 
the result so fast as to outrun the logic of their 
slow brother and make his acquisitions poor.' 
'T is their mood and tone that is important. 
Does their mind misgive them, or are they firm 
and cheerful ? 'T is a true report that things 
are going ill or well. And any remarkable opin- 
ion or movement shared by woman will be the 
first sign of revolution. 

Plato said. Women are the same as men in 
faculty, only less in degree. But the general 
voice of mankind has agreed that they have 
their own strength ; that women are strong by 
sentiment ; that the same mental height which 



WOMAN 407 

their husbands attain by toil, they attain by 
sympathy with their husbands. Man is the will, 
and Woman the sentiment. In this ship of 
humanity. Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the 
sail : when Woman affects to steer, the rudder 
is only a masked sail. When women engage in 
any art or trade, it is usually as a resource, not 
as a primary object. The life of the affections 
is primary to them, so that there is usually no 
employment or career which they will not with 
their own applause and that of society quit for 
a suitable marriage. And they give entirely to 
their affections, set their whole fortune on the 
die, lose themselves eagerly in the glory of 
their husbands and children. Man stands aston- 
ished at a magnanimity he cannot pretend to. 
Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, one of the heroines 
of the English Commonwealth, who wrote the 
life of her husband, the Governor of Notting- 
ham, says, " If he esteemed her at a higher rate 
than she in herself could have deserved, he was 
the author of that virtue he doted on, while she 
only reflected his own glories upon him. All 
that she was, was him, while he was hers, and 
all that she is now, at best, but his pale shade." 
As for Plato's opinion, it is true that, up to re- 
cent times, in no art or science, nor in painting. 



4o8 WOMAN 

poetry or music, have they produced a master- 
piece. Till the new education and larger oppor- 
tunities of very modern times, this position, 
with the fewest possible exceptions, has always 
been true. Sappho, to be sure, in the Olympic 
Games, gained the crown over Pindar. But, in 
general, no mastery in either of the fine arts — 
which should, one would say, be the arts of 
women — has yet been obtained by them, equal 
to the mastery of men in the same. The part 
they play in education, in the care of the young 
and the tuition of older children, is their organic 
office in the world. So much sympathy as they 
have makes them inestimable as the mediators 
between those who have knowledge and those 
who want it : besides, their fine organization, 
their taste and love of details, makes the know- 
ledge they give better in their hands. 

But there is an art which is better than paint- 
ing, poetry, music, or architecture, — better 
than botany, geology, or any science ; namely. 
Conversation. Wise, cultivated, genial conver- 
sation is the last flower of civilization and the 
best result which life has to offer us, — a cup 
for gods, which has no repentance. Conversa- 
tion is our account of ourselves. All we have, 
all we can, all we know, is brought into play. 



WOMAN 409 

and as the reproduction, in finer form, of all 
our havings. 

Women are, by this and their social influence, 
the civilizers of mankind. What is civilization ? 
I answer, the power of good women. It was 
Burns's remark when he first came to Edin- 
burgh that between the men of rustic life and 
the polite world he observed little difference ; 
that in the former, though unpolished by fashion 
and unenlightened by science, he had found 
much observation and much intelligence ; but 
a refined and accomplished woman was a being 
almost new to him, and of which he had formed 
a very inadequate idea. " 1 like women,*' said 
a clear-headed man of the world ; " they are so 
finished." They finish society, manners, lan- 
guage. Form and ceremony are their realm. 
They embellish trifles. All these ceremonies 
that hedge our life around are not to be despised, 
and when we have become habituated to them, 
cannot be dispensed with. No woman can 
despise them with impunity. Their genius de- 
lights in ceremonies, in forms, in decorating life 
with manners, with properties, order and grace. 
They are, in their nature, more relative ; the 
circumstance must always be fit ; out of place 
they lose half their weight, out of place they are 



410 WOMAN 

disfranchised. Position, Wren said, is essential 
to the perfecting of beauty ; — a fine building 
is lost in a dark lane ; a statue should stand in 
the air ; much more true is it of woman. 

We commonly say that easy circumstances 
seem somehow necessary to the finish of the 
female character : but then it is to be remem- 
bered that they create these with all their might. 
They are always making that civilization which 
they require ; that state of art, of decoration, 
that ornamental life in which they best appear. 

The spiritual force of man is as much shown 
in taste, in his fancy and imagination, — attach- 
ing deep meanings to things and to arbitrary in- 
ventions of no real value, — as in his perception 
of truth. He is as much raised above the beast 
by this creative faculty as by any other. The 
horse and ox use no delays ; they run to the 
river when thirsty, to the corn when hungry, 
and say no thanks, but fight down whatever 
opposes their appetite. But man invents and 
adorns all he does with delays and degrees, paints 
it all over with forms, to please himself better ; 
he invented majesty and the etiquette of courts 
and drawing-rooms ; architecture, curtains, 
dress, all luxuries and adornments, and the ele- 
gance of privacy, to increase the joys of society. 



WOMAN 411 

He invented marriage ; and surrounded by re- 
ligion, by comeliness, by all manner of dignities 
and renunciations, the union of the sexes. 

And how should we better measure the gulf 
between the best intercourse of men in old 
Athens, in London, or in our American capitals, 

— between this and the hedgehog existence of 
diggers of worms, and the eaters of clay and offal, 

— than by signalizing just this department of 
taste or comeliness ? Herein woman is the 
prime genius and ordainer. There is no grace 
that is taught by the dancing-master, no style 
adopted into the etiquette of courts, but was first 
the whim and the mere action of some brilliant 
woman, who charmed beholders by this new 
expression, and made it remembered and copied. 
And I think they should magnify their ritual 
of manners.' Society, conversation, decorum, 
flowers, dances, colors, forms, are their homes 
and attendants. They should be found in fit 
surroundings — with fair approaches, with agree- 
able architecture, and with all advantages which 
the means of man collect : 

** The far-fetched diamond finds its home 
Flashing and smouldering in her hair. 
For her the seas their pearls reveal. 

Art and strange lands her pomp sup'ply 



412 WOMAN 

With purple, chrome and cochineal. 

Ochre and lapis hzuli. 
The worm its golden woof presents. 

Whatever runs, flies, dives or delves 
All doff for her their ornaments. 

Which suit her better than themselves.** « 

There is no gift of Nature without some draw- 
back. So, to women, this exquisite structure 
could not exist without its own penalty. More 
vulnerable, more infirm, more mortal than men, 
they could not be such excellent artists in this 
element of fancy if they did not lend and give 
themselves to it. They are poets who believe 
their own poetry. They emit from their pores 
a colored atmosphere, one would say, wave upon 
wave of rosy light, in which they walk evermore, 
and see all objects through this warm-tinted 
mist that envelops them. 

But the starry crown of woman is in the 
power of her affection and sentiment, and the 
infinite enlargements to which they lead. Beau- 
tiful is the passion of love, painter and adorner 
of youth and early life : but who suspects, in 
its blushes and tremors, what tragedies, hero- 
isms and immortalities are beyond it? The 
passion, with all its grace and poetry, is profane 
to that which follows it. All these affections 



WOMAN 413 

are only introductory to that which is beyond, 
and to that which is sublime. 

We men have no right to say it, but the om- 
nipotence of Eve is in humility. The instincts 
of mankind have drawn the Virgin Mother — 

** Created beings all in lowliness 

Surpassing, as in height above them all."' 

This is the Divine Person whom Dante and 
Milton saw in vision. This is the victory of 
Griselda, her supreme humility. And it is 
when love has reached this height that all our 
pretty rhetoric begins to have meaning. When 
we see that, it adds to the soul a new soul, it is 
honey in the mouth, music in the ear and balsam 
in the heart. 

** Far have I clambered in my mind. 
But nought so great as Love I find. 
What is thy tent, where dost thou dwell ? 
* My mansion is humility. 
Heaven's vastest capability.* 
The further it doth downward tend. 
The higher up it doth ascend."* 

The first thing men think of, when they love, 
is to exhibit their usefulness and advantages to 
the object of their affection. Women make light 
of these, asking only love. They wish it to be 
an exchange of nobleness. 



414 WOMAN 

There is much in their nature, much in their 
social position which gives them a certain power 
of divination. And women know, at first sight, 
the characters of those with whom they con- 
verse. There is much that tends to give them a 
religious height which men do not attain. Their 
sequestration from affairs and from the injury to 
the moral sense which affairs often inflict, aids 
this. And in every remarkable religious devel- 
opment in the world, women have taken a lead- 
ing part. It is very curious that in the East, 
where Woman occupies, nationally, a lower 
sphere, where the laws resist the education and 
emancipation of women, — in the Mohammedan 
faith. Woman yet occupies the same leading 
position, as a prophetess, that she has among 
the ancient Greeks, or among the Hebrews, or 
among the Saxons. This power, this religious 
character, is everywhere to be remarked in 
them.' 

The action of society is progressive. In bar- 
barous society the position of women is always 
low — in the Eastern nations lower than in the 
West. " When a daughter is born," says the 
Shiking, the old Sacred Book of China, " she 
sleeps on the ground, she is clothed with a wrap- 
per, she plays with a tile ; she is incapable of 



WOMAN 415 

evil or of good." And something like that 
position, in all low society, is the position of 
woman ; because, as before remarked, she is 
herself its civilizer. With the advancements of 
society, the position and influence of woman 
bring her strength or her faults into light. In 
modern times, three or four conspicuous instru- 
mentalities may be marked. After the deification 
of Woman in the Catholic Church, in the six- 
teenth or seventeenth century, — when her relig- 
ious nature gave her, of course, new importance, 

— the Quakers have the honor of having first 
established, in their discipline, the equality in the 
sexes. It is even more perfect in the later sect 
of the Shakers, where no business is broached 
or counselled without the intervention of one 
elder and one elderess. 

A second epoch for Woman was in France, 

— entirely civil ; the change of sentiment from 
a rude to a polite character, in the age of Louis 
XIV., — commonly dated from the building of 
the Hotel de Rambouillet.' I think another 
important step was made by the doctrine of 
Swedenborg, a sublime genius who gave a sci- 
entific exposition of the part played severally by 
man and woman in the world, and showed the 
difference of sex to run through nature and 



4i6 WOMAN 

through thought. Of all Christian sects this is 
at this moment the most vital and aggressive. 

Another step was the effect of the action of 
the age in the antagonism to Slavery. It was 
easy to enlist Woman in this ; it was impossible 
not to enlist her. But that Cause turned out 
to be a great scholar. He was a terrible meta- 
physician. He was a jurist, a poet, a divine. 
Was never a University of Oxford or Gottingen 
that made such students. It took a man from 
the plough and made him acute, eloquent, and 
wise, to the silencing of the doctors. There 
was nothing it did not pry into, no right it did 
not explore, no wrong it did not expose. And 
it has, among its other effects, given Woman 
a feeling of public duty and an added self- 
respect. 

One truth leads in another by the hand ; one 
right is an accession of strength to take more. 
And the times are marked by the new attitude 
of Woman ; urging, by argument and by asso- 
ciation, her rights of all kinds, — in short, to 
one half of the world ; — as the right to educa- 
tion, to avenues of employment, to equal rights 
of property, to equal rights in marriage, to the 
exercise of the professions and of suffrage. 

Of course, this conspicuousness had its incon- 



WOMAN 417 

veniences. But it is cheap wit that has been 
spent on this subject ; from Aristophanes, in 
whose comedies I confess my dulness to find 
good joke, to Rabelais, in whom it is monstrous 
exaggeration of temperament, and not borne out 
by anything in nature, — down to EngHsh Com- 
edy, and, in our day, to Tennyson," and the 
American newspapers. In all, the body of the 
joke is one, namely, to charge women with tem- 
perament ; to describe them as victims of 
temperament; and is identical with Mahomet's 
opinion that women have not a sufficient moral 
or intellectual force to control the perturbations 
of their physical structure. These were all draw- 
ings of morbid anatomy, and such satire as might 
be written on the tenants of a hospital or on an 
asylum for idiots. Of course it would be easy 
for women to retaliate in kind, by painting men 
from the dogs and gorillas that have worn our 
shape. That they have not, is an eulogy on 
their taste and self-respect. The good easy 
world took the joke which it liked. There is 
always the want of thought ; there is always 
credulity. There are plenty of people who be- 
lieve women to be incapable of anything but to 
cook, incapable of interest in affairs. There are 
plenty of people who believe that the world is 



41 8 WOMAN 

governed by men of dark complexions, that 
affairs are only directed by such, and do not see 
the use of contemplative men, or how ignoble 
would be the world that wanted them. And so 
without the affection of women. 

But for the general charge : no doubt it is 
well founded. They are victims of the finer 
temperament. They have tears, and gayeties, and 
faintings, and glooms and devotion to trifles. 
Nature's end, of maternity for twenty years, was 
of so supreme importance that it was to be 
secured at all events, even to the sacrifice of the 
highest beauty. They are more personal. Men 
taunt them that, whatever they do, say, read or 
write, they are thinking of themselves and their 
set. Men are not to the same degree tempera- 
mented, for there are multitudes of men who 
live to objects quite out of them, as to politics, 
to trade, to letters or an art, unhindered by 
any influence of constitution. 

The answer that lies, silent or spoken, in the 
minds of well-meaning persons, to the new 
claims, is this : that though their mathematical 
justice is not to be denied, yet the best women 
do not wish these things ; they are asked for 
by people who intellectually seek them, but 



WOMAN 419 

who have not the support or sympathy of the 
truest women ; and that, if the laws and customs 
were modified in the manner proposed, it would 
embarrass and pain gentle and lovely persons 
with duties which they would find irksome and 
distasteful. Very likely. Providence is always 
surprising us with new and unlikely instruments. 
But perhaps it is because these people have been 
deprived of education, fine companions, oppor- 
tunities, such as they wished, — because they 
feel the same rudeness and disadvantage which 
offends you, — that they have been stung to say, 
* It is too late for us to be polished and fash- 
ioned into beauty, but, at least, we will see that 
the whole race of women shall not suffer as we 
have suffered.* 

They have an unquestionable right to their 
own property. And if a woman demand votes, 
ofHces and poHtical equality with men, as among 
the Shakers an Elder and Elderess are of equal 
power, — and among the Quakers, — it must 
not be refused. It is very cheap wit that finds 
it so droll that a woman should vote. Educate 
and refine society to the highest point, — bring 
together a cultivated society of both sexes, in a 
drawing-room, and consult and decide by voices 
on a question of taste or on a question of right, and 



420 WOMAN 

is there any absurdity or any practical difficulty 
in obtaining their authentic opinions ? If not, 
then there need be none in a hundred companies, 
if you educate them and accustom them to 
judge. And, for the effect of it, I can say, for 
one, that all my points would sooner be carried 
in the State if women voted. On the questions 
that are important, — whether the government 
shall be in one person, or whether represent- 
ative, or whether democratic ; whether men shall 
be holden in bondage, or shall be roasted alive 
and eaten, as in Typee, or shall be hunted with 
bloodhounds, as in this country ; whether men 
shall be hanged for stealing, or hanged at all ; 
whether the unlimited sale of cheap liquors shall 
be allowed ; — they would give, I suppose, as 
intelligent a vote as the voters of Boston or New 
York. 

We may ask, to be sure, — Why need you 
vote ? If new power is here, of a character which 
solves old tough questions, which puts me and 
all the rest in the wrong, tries and condemns our 
religion, customs, laws, and opens new careers to 
our young receptive men and women, you can 
well leave voting to the old dead people. Those 
whom you teach, and those whom you half teach, 
will fast enough make themselves considered and 



WOMAN 421 

strong with their new insight, and votes will 
follow from all the dull. 

The objection to their voting is the same as 
is urged, in the lobbies of legislatures, against 
clergymen who take an active part in politics ; 
— that if they are good clergymen they are 
unacquainted with the expediencies of politics, 
and if they become good politicians they are 
worse clergymen. So of women, that they can- 
not enter this arena without being contaminated 
and unsexed. 

Here are two or three objections : first, a want 
of practical wisdom ; second, a too purely ideal 
view ; and, third, danger of contamination. For 
their want of intimate knowledge of affairs, I do 
not think this ought to disqualify them from vot- 
ing at any town-meeting which I ever attended. 
I could heartily wish the objection were sound. 
But if any man will take the trouble to see how 
our people vote, — how many gentlemen are 
willing to take on themselves the trouble of 
thinking and determining for you, and, standing 
at the door of the polls, give every innocent cit- 
izen his ticket as he comes in, informing him 
that this is the vote of his party ; and how the 
innocent citizen, without further demur, goes 
and drops it in the ballot-box, — I cannot but 



422 WOMAN 

think he will agree that most women might vote 
as wisely. 

For the other point, of their not knowing the 
world, and aiming at abstract right without allow- 
ance for circumstances, — that is not a disquali- 
fication, but a qualification. Human society is 
made up of partialities. Each citizen has an in- 
terest and a view of his own, which, if followed 
out to the extreme, would leave no room for any 
other citizen. One man is timid and another 
rash ; one would change nothing, and the other 
is pleased with nothing; one wishes schools, 
another armies, one gunboats, another public 
gardens. Bring all these biases together and 
something is done in favor of them all. 

Every one is a half vote, but the next elector 
behind him brings the other or corresponding 
half in his hand : a reasonable result is had. Now 
there is no lack, I am sure, of the expediency, or 
of the interests of trade or of imperative class 
interests being neglected. There is no lack of 
votes representing the physical wants ; and if in 
your city the uneducated emigrant vote numbers 
thousands, representing a brutal ignorance and 
mere animal wants, it is to be corrected by an 
educated and religious vote, representing the 
wants and desires of honest and refined persons. 



WOMAN 423 

If the wants, the passions, the vices, are allowed 
a full vote through the hands of a half-brutal 
intemperate population, I think it but fair that 
the virtues, the aspirations should be allowed a 
full vote, as an offset, through the purest part of 
the people. 

As for the unsexing and contamination, — 
that only accuses our existing politics, shows 
how barbarous we are, — that our policies are 
so crooked, made up of things not to be spoken, 
to be understood only by wink and nudge ; 
this man to be coaxed, that man to be bought, 
and that other to be duped. It is easy to see 
that there is contamination enough, but it rots 
the men now, and fills the air with stench. Come 
out of that : it is like a dance-cellar. The fairest 
names in this country in literature, in law, have 
gone into Congress and come out dishonored. 
And when I read the list of men of intellect, 
of refined pursuits, giants in law, or eminent 
scholars, or of social distinction, leading men of 
wealth and enterprise in the commercial com- 
munity, and see what they have voted for and 
suffered to be voted for, I think no community 
was ever so poHtely and elegantly betrayed. 

I do not think it yet appears that women wish 



424 WOMAN 

this equal share in public affairs. But it is they 
and not we that are to determine it. Let the laws 
be purged of every barbarous remainder, every 
barbarous impediment to women. Let the 
public donations for education be equally shared 
by them, let them enter a school as freely as a 
church, let them have and hold and give their 
property as men do theirs ; — and in a few years 
it will easily appear whether they wish a voice in 
making the laws that are to govern them. If 
you do refuse them a vote, you will also refuse 
to tax them, — according to our Teutonic prin- 
ciple, No representation, no tax. 

All events of history are to be regarded as 
growths and offshoots of the expanding mind 
of the race, and this appearance of new opinions, 
their currency and force in many minds, is itself 
the wonderful fact. For whatever is popular 
is important, shows the spontaneous sense of 
the hour. The aspiration of this century will 
be the code of the next. It holds of high and 
distant causes, of the same influences that make 
the sun and moon. When new opinions appear, 
they will be entertained and respected, by every 
fair mind, according to their reasonableness, and 
not according to their convenience, or their fit- 
ness to shock our customs. But let us deal with 



WOMAN 425 

them greatly ; let them make their way by the 
upper road, and not by the way of manufactur- 
ing public opinion, which lapses continually into 
expediency, and makes charlatans. All that is 
spontaneous is irresistible, and forever it is indi- 
vidual force that interests. I need not repeat to 
you — your own solitude will suggest it — that 
a masculine woman is not strong, but a lady is. 
The loneliest thought, the purest prayer, is rush- 
ing to be the history of a thousand years. 

Let us have the true woman, the adorner, the 
hospitable, the religious heart, and no lawyer 
need be called in to write stipulations, the cun- 
ning clauses of provision, the strong investitures ; 
— for woman moulds the lawgiver and writes the 
law. But I ought to say, I think it impossible 
to separate the interests and education of the 
sexes. Improve and refine the men, and you 
do the same by the women, whether you will or 
no. Every woman being the wife or the daughter 
of a man, — wife, daughter, sister, mother, of a 
man, she can never be very far from his ear, 
never not of his counsel, if she has really some- 
thing to urge that is good in itself and agreeable 
to nature. Slavery it is that makes slavery ; 
freedom, freedom. The slavery of women hap- 
pened when the men were slaves of kings. The 



426 WOMAN 

melioration of manners brought their meliora- 
tion of course. It could not be otherwise, and 
hence the new desire of better laws. For there 
are always a certain number of passionately lov- 
, ing fathers, brothers, husbands and sons who 
put their might into the endeavor to make a 
daughter, a wife, or a mother happy in the way 
that suits best. Woman should find in man her 
guardian. Silently she looks for that, and when 
she finds that he is not, as she instantly does, 
she betakes her to her own defences, and does 
the best she can. But when he is her guardian, 
fulfilled with all nobleness, knows and accepts 
his duties as her brother, all goes well for both. 

The new movement is only a tide shared by 
the spirits of man and woman; and you may 
proceed in the faith that whatever the woman's 
heart is prompted to desire, the man's mind is 
simultaneously prompted to accomplish.' 



XXI 
ADDRESS 

TO THE INHABITANTS OF CONCORD AT THE 

CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 

SEPTEMBER 29, 1855 



SLEEPY HOLLOW 

No abbey's gloom, nor dark cathedral stoops. 
No winding torches paint the midnight air; 

Here the green pines delight, the aspen droops 
Along the modest pathways, and those fair 

Pale asters of the season spread their plumes 

Around this field, fit garden for our tombs. 

And shalt thou pause to hear some funeral-bell 
Slow stealing o*er the heart in this calm place. 

Not with a throb of pain, a feverish knell. 
But in its kind and supplicating grace. 

It says. Go, pilgrim, on thy march, be more 

Friend to the friendless than thou wast before; 

Learn from the loved one's rest serenity; 

To-morrow that soft bell for thee shall sound. 
And thou repose beneath the whispering tree. 

One tribute more to this submissive ground; — 
Prison thy soul from malice, bar out pride. 
Nor these pale flowers nor this still field deride: 

Rather to those ascents of being turn 

Where a ne'er-setting sun illumes the year 

Eternal, and the incessant watch-fires burn 
Of unspent holiness and goodness clear, — 

Forget man's littleness, deserve the best, 

God's mercy in thy thought and life confest." 

William Ellery Channing. 



ADDRESS 

TO THE INHABITANTS OF CONCORD AT THE 

CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 

SEPTEMBER 29, 1855 

CITIZENS AND FRIENDS: The com- 
mittee to whom was confided the charge of 
carrying out the wishes of the town in opening 
the cemetery, having proceeded so far as to 
enclose the ground, and cut the necessary roads, 
and having laid off as many lots as are likely to be 
wanted at present, have thought it fit to call the 
inhabitants together, to show you the ground, 
now that the new avenues make its advantages 
appear ; and to put it at your disposition. 

They have thought that the taking possession 
of this field ought to be marked by a public 
meeting and religious rites : and they have re- 
quested me to say a few words which the serious 
and tender occasion inspires. 

And this concourse of friendly company as- 
sures me that they have rightly interpreted your 
wishes. [Here followed, in the address, about 
three pages of matter which Mr. Emerson used 
later in his essay on Immortality, which may be 
found in the volume Letters and Social AimSy 



430 CONSECRATION OF 

beginning on page 3 24, " The credence of 
men/* etc., and ending on pages 326-27 with 
the sentence, " Meantime the true disciples saw, 
through the letters, the doctrine of eternity 
which dissolved the poor corpse and nature also, 
and gave grandeur to the passing hour."] 

In these times we see the defects of our old 
theology ; its inferiority to our habit of thoughts. 
Men go up and down ; Science is popularized ; 
the irresistible democracy — shall I call it ? - — of 
chemistry, of vegetation, which recomposes for 
new life every decomposing particle, — the race 
never dying, the individual never spared, — have 
impressed on the mind of the age the futility of 
these old arts of preserving. We give our earth 
to earth. We will not jealously guard a few atoms 
under immense marbles, selfishly and impos- 
sibly sequestering it from the vast circulations 
of Nature, but, at the same time, fully admitting 
the divine hope and love which belong to our 
nature, wishing to make one spot tender to our 
children, who shall come hither in the next 
century to read the dates of these lives. 

Our people accepting this lesson from science, 
yet touched by the tenderness which Christianity 
breathes, have found a mean in the consecration 
of gardens. A simultaneous movement has, in 



SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY 431 

a hundred cities and towns in this country, 
selected some convenient piece of undulating 
ground with pleasant woods and waters ; every 
family chooses its own clump of trees ; and we 
lay the corpse in these leafy colonnades. 

A grove of trees, — what benefit or orna- 
ment is so fair and great ? they make the land- 
scape ; they keep the earth habitable ; their roots 
run down, like cattle, to the water-courses ; their 
heads expand to feed the atmosphere. The life 
of a tree is a hundred and a thousand years ; its 
decays ornamental ; its repairs self-made : they 
grow when we sleep, they grew when we were 
unborn. Man is a moth among these longev- 
ities. He plants for the next millennium. 
Shadows haunt them ; all that ever lived about 
them chng to them. You can almost see behind 
these pines the Indian with bow and arrow lurk- 
ing yet exploring the traces of the old trail. 

Modern taste has shown that there is no orna- 
ment, no architecture alone, so sumptuous as 
well disposed woods and waters, where art has 
been employed only to remove superfluities, and 
bring out the natural advantages. In cultivated 
grounds one sees the picturesque and opulent 
eflFect of the familiar shrubs, barberry, lilac, 
privet and thorns, when they are disposed in 



432 CONSECRATION OF 

masses, and in large spaces. What work of man 
will compare with the plantation of a park ? It 
dignifies life. It is a seat for friendship, counsel, 
taste and religion. I do not wonder that they 
are the chosen badge and point of pride of 
European nobility. But how much more are 
they needed by us, anxious, overdriven Ameri- 
cans, to stanch and appease that fury of tem- 
perament which our climate bestows ! 

This tract fortunately lies adjoining to the 
Agricultural Society's ground, to the New Burial 
Ground, to the Court House and the Town 
House, making together a large block of public 
ground, permanent property of the town and 
county, — all the ornaments of either adding so 
much value to all. 

I suppose all of us will readily admit the value 
of parks and cultivated grounds to the pleasure 
and education of the people, but I have heard it 
said here that we would gladly spend for a park 
for the living, but not for a cemetery ; a garden 
for the living, a home of thought and friendship. 
Certainly the living need it more than the dead ; 
indeed, to speak precisely, it is given to the dead 
for the reaction of benefit on the living. But if 
the direct regard to the living be thought expe- 
dient, that is also in your power. This ground 



SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY 433 

is happily so divided by Nature as to admit of 
this relation between the Past and the Present. 
In the valley where we stand will be the Monu- 
ments. On the other side of the ridge, towards 
the town, a portion of the land is in full view of 
the cheer of the village and is out of sight of the 
Monuments ; it admits of being reserved for 
secular purposes ; for games, — not such as the 
Greeks honored the dead with, but for games of 
education ; the distribution of school prizes ; 
the meeting of teachers ; patriotic eloquence, the 
utterance of the principles of national liberty to 
private, social, literary or religious fraternities. 
Here we may establish that most agreeable 
of all museums, and agreeable to the temper of 
our times, — an Arboretum^ — wherein may be 
planted, by the taste of every citizen, one tree, 
with its name recorded in a book ; every tree 
that is native to Massachusetts, or will grow in 
it ; so that every child may be shown growing, 
side by side, the eleven oaks of Massachusetts ; 
and the twenty willows ; the beech, which we 
have allowed to die out of the eastern counties ; 
and here the vast firs ,of California and Oregon. 
This spot for twenty years has borne the name 
o{ Sleepy Hollow, Its seclusion from the village 
in its immediate neighborhood had made it to 



434 CONSECRATION OF 

all the inhabitants an easy retreat on a Sabbath 
day, or a summer twilight, and it was inevitably 
chosen by them when the design of a new cem- 
etery was broached, if it did not suggest the 
design, as the fit place for their final repose. In 
all the multitudes of woodlands and hillsides, 
which within a few years have been laid out with 
a similar design, I have not known one so fitly 
named. Sleepy Hollow, In this quiet valley, as 
in the palm of Nature's hand, we shall sleep well 
when we have finished our day. What is the 
Earth itself but a surface scooped into nooks and 
caves of slumber — according to the Eastern 
fable, a bridge full of holes, into one or other of 
which all the passengers sink to silence ? Nay, 
when I think of the mystery of life, its round 
of illusions, our ignorance of its beginning or its 
end, the speed of the changes of that glittering 
dream we call existence, — I think .sometimes 
that the vault of the sky arching there upward, 
under which our busy being is whirled, is only 
a Sleepy Hollow, with path of Suns, instead of 
foot-paths ; and Milky Ways, for truck-roads. 

The ground has the peaceful character that 
belongs to this town ; — no lofty crags, no glit- 
tering cataracts ; — but I hold that every part of 
Nature is handsome when not deformed by bad 



SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY 435 

Art. Bleak sea-rocks and sea-downs and blasted 
heaths have their own beauty ; and though we 
make much ado in our praises of Italy or Andes, 
Nature makes not so much difference. The 
morning, the moonlight, the spring day, are 
magical painters, and can glorify a meadow or 
a rock. 

But we must look forward also, and make our- 
selves a thousand years old ; and when these 
acorns, that are falling at our feet, are oaks over- 
shadowing our children in a remote century, this 
mute green bank will be full of history : the 
good, the wise and great will have left their 
names and virtues on the trees ; heroes, poets, 
beauties, sanctities, benefactors, will have made 
the air timeable and articulate. 

And hither shall repair, to this modest spot 
of God's earth, every sweet and friendly influ- 
ence ; the beautiful night and beautiful day will 
come in turn to sit upon the grass. Our use 
will not displace the old tenants. The well-be- 
loved birds will not sing one song the less, the 
high-holding woodpecker, the meadow-lark, the 
oriole, robin, purple finch, bluebird, thrush and 
red-eyed warbler, the heron, the bittern will find 
out the hospitality and protection from the gun 
of this asylum, and will seek the waters of the 



436 SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY 

meadow ; and in the grass, and by the pond, the 
locust, the cricket and the hyla, shall shrilly 
play. 

We shall bring hither the body of the dead, 
but how shall we catch the escaped soul ? Here 
will burn for us, as the oath of God, the sublime 
belief. I have heard that death takes us away 
from ill things, not from good. I have heard 
that when we pronounce the name of man, we 
pronounce the belief of immortality. All great 
natures delight in stability ; all great men find 
eternity affirmed in the promise of their facul- 
ties. Why is the fable of the Wandering Jew 
agreeable to men, but because they want more 
time and land to execute their thoughts in ? 
Life is not long enough for art, nor long enough 
for friendship. The evidence from intellect is 
as valid as the evidence from love. The being 
that can share a thought and feeHng so sublime 
as confidence in truth is no mushroom. Our 
dissatisfaction with any other solution is the 
blazing evidence of immortality. 



XXII 
ROBERT BURNS 

SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF 
THE BURNS CENTENARY, BOSTON 
JANUARY 25, 1859 



" His was the music to whose tone 

The common pulse of man keeps time 
In cot or castle's mirth or moan. 
In cold or sunny clime. 

Praise to the bard! his words are driven. 
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown. 

Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven. 
The birds of fame have flown.*' 

Halleck. 



ROBERT BURNS 

MR. PRESIDENT, and Gentlemen: 
I do not know by what untoward acci- 
dent it has chanced, and I forbear to inquire, 
that, in this accomplished circle, it should fall 
to me, the worst Scotsman of all, to receive 
your commands, and at the latest hour too, to 
respond to the sentiment just offered, and 
which indeed makes the occasion. But I am 
told there is no appeal, and I must trust to 
the inspirations of the theme to make a fitness 
which does not otherwise exist. Yet, Sir, I 
heartily feel the singular claims of the occasion. 
At the first announcement, from I know not 
whence, that the 25th of January was the hun- 
dredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, 
a sudden consent warmed the great English race, 
in all its kingdoms, colonies and states, all over 
the world, to keep the festival. We are here to 
hold our parliament with love and poesy, as men 
were wont to do in the Middle Ages. Those 
famous parliaments might or might not have 
had more stateliness and better singers than 
we, — though that is yet to be known, — but 
they could not have better reason. I can only 



440 ROBERT BURNS 

explain this singular unanimity in a race which 
rarely acts together, but rather after their watch- 
word. Each for himself, — by the fact that 
Robert Burns, the poet of the middle class, re- 
presents in the mind of men to-day that great 
uprising of the middle class against the armed 
and privileged minorities, that uprising which 
worked politically in the American and French 
Revolutions, and which, not in governments 
so much as in education and social order, has 
changed the face of the world. 

In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding 
and fortunes were low. His organic sentiment 
was absolute independence, and resting as it 
should on a life of labor. No man existed who 
could look down on him. They that looked 
into his eyes saw that they might look down the 
sky as easily.' His muse and teaching was com- 
mon sense, joyful, aggressive, irresistible. Not 
Latimer, nor Luther struck more telling blows 
against false theology than did this brave singer. 
The Confession of Augsburg, the Declaration 
of Independence, the French Rights of Man, 
and the Marseillaise, are not more weighty docu- 
ments in the history of freedom than the songs 
of Burns. His satire has lost none of its edge. 
His musical arrows yet sing through the air. 



ROBERT BURNS 441 

He is so substantially a reformer that I find his 
grand plain sense in close chain with the greatest 
masters, — Rabelais, Shakspeare in comedy, 
Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If I should add 
another name, I find it only in a living country- 
man of Burns." , 

He is an exceptional genius. The people who 
care nothing for literature and poetry care for 
Burns. It was indifferent — they thought who 
saw him — whether he wrote verse or not : he 
could have done anything else as well. Yet how 
true a poet is he ! And the poet, too, of poor 
men, of gray hodden and the guernsey coat and 
the blouse. He has given voice to all the ex- 
periences of common life ; he has endeared the 
farmhouse and cottage, patches and poverty, 
beans and barley ; ale, the poor man's wine ; 
hardship ; the fear of debt ; the dear society of 
weans and wife, of brothers and sisters, proud of 
each other, knowing so few and finding amends 
for want and obscurity in books and thoughts.* 
What a love of Nature, and, shall I say it ? of 
middle-class Nature. Not like Goethe, in the 
stars, or like Byron, in the ocean, or Moore, in 
the luxurious East, but in the homely landscape 
which the poor see around them, — bleak 
leagues of pasture and stubble, ice and sleet and 



442 ROBERl:^ BURNS 

rain and snow-choked brooks; birds, hares, 
field-mice, thistles and heather, which he daily 
knew. How many " Bonny Doons " and " John 
Anderson my jo*s " and " Auld lang synes " all 
around the earth have his verses been applied to ! 
And his love-songs. still woo and melt the youths 
and maids ; the farm-work, the country holiday, 
the fishing-cobble are still his debtors to-day. 

And as he was thus the poet of the poor, 
anxious, cheerful, working humanity, so had he 
the language of low life. He grew up in a rural 
district, speaking ?ipatois unintelligible to all but 
natives, and he has made the Lowland Scotch a 
Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in 
history of a language made classic by the genius 
of a single man. But more than this. He had 
that secret of genius to draw from the bottom of 
society the strength of its speech, and astonish 
the ears of the polite with these artless words, 
better than art, and filtered of all offence through 
his beauty. It seemed odious to Luther that 
the devil should have all the best tunes ; he 
would bring them into the churches ; and Burns 
knew how to take from fairs and gypsies, black- 
smiths and drovers, the speech of the market 
and street, and clothe it with melody. But I am 
detaining you too long. The memory of Burns, 



ROBERT BURNS 443 

— • I am afraid heaven and earth have taken too 
good care of it to leave us anything to say. The 
west winds are niur;iiuring it. Open the win- 
dows behind you, and hearken for the incoming 
tide, what the waves say of it. The doves perch- 
ing always on the eaves of the Stone Chapel 
opposite, may know something about it. Every 
name in broad Scotland keeps his fame bright. 
The memory of Burns, — every man's, every 
boy's and girl's head carries snatches of his 
songs, and they say them by heart, and, what is 
strangest of all, never learned them from a book, 
but from mouth to mouth. The wind whispers 
them, the birds whistle them, the corn, barley, 
and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them, nay, the 
music-boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed 
to play them ; the hand-organs of the Savoyards 
in all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells 
ring them in the spires. They are the property 
and the solace of mankind.' 



XXIII 
REMARKS 

AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE THREE HUNDREDTH 

ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF SHAKSPEARE 

BY THE SATURDAY CLUB AT THE 

REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON, 1864 



England's genius filled all measure 

Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure. 

Gave to mind its emperor 

And life was larger than before; 

And centuries brood, nor can attain 

The sense and bound of Shakspeare's brain. 

The men who lived with him became 

Poets, for the air was fame. 



SHAKSPEARE 

TIS not our fault if we have not made 
this evening's circle still richer than it is. 
We seriously endeavored, besides our brothers 
and our seniors, on whom the ordinary lead 
of literary and social action falls — and falls 
because of their ability — to draw out of their 
retirements a few rarer lovers of the muse — 
" seld-seen flamens " — whom this day seemed to 
elect and challenge. And it is to us a painful dis- 
appointment that Bryant and Whittier as guests, 
and our own Hawthorne, — with the best will 
to come, — should have found it impossible at 
last; and again, that. a well-known and honored 
compatriot, who first in Boston wrote elegant 
verse, and on Shakspeare, and whose American 
devotion through forty or fifty years to the 
affairs of a bank, has not been able to bury the 
fires of his genius, — Mr. Charles Sprague, — 
pleads the infirmities of age as an absolute bar 
to his presence with us. 

We regret also the absence of our members 
Sumner and Motley. 

We can hardly think of an occasion where 



448 SHAKSPEARE 

so little need be said. We are all content to 
let Shakspeare speak for himself. His fame is 
settled on the foundations of the moral and 
intellectual world. Wherever there are men, 
and in the degree in which they are civil — 
have power of mind, sensibility to beauty, music, 
the secrets of passion, and the liquid expression 
of thought, he has risen to his place as the first 
poet of the world. 

Genius is the consoler of our mortal condition, 
and Shakspeare taught us that the little world 
of the heart is vaster, deeper and richer than 
the spaces of astronomy. What shocks of sur- 
prise and sympathetic power, this battery, which 
he is, imparts to every fine mind that is born ! 
We say to the young child in the cradle, 
* Happy, and defended against Fate ! for here 
is Nature, and here is Shakspeare, waiting for 
you ! ' 

'T is our metre of culture. He is a cultivated 
man — who can tell us something new of 
Shakspeare. All criticism is only a making of 
rules out of his beauties. He is as superior to 
his countrymen, as to all other countrymen. 
He fulfilled the famous prophecy of Socrates, 
that the poet most excellent in tragedy would 
be most excellent in comedy, and more than 



SHAKSPEARE 449 

fulfilled it by making tragedy also a victorious 
melody which healed its own wounds. In short, 
Shakspeare is the one resource of our life on 
which no gloom gathers ; the fountain of joy 
which honors him who tastes it ; day without 
night ; pleasure without repentance ; the genius 
which, in unpoetic ages, keeps poetry in honor 
and, in sterile periods, keeps up the credit of 
the human mind. 

His genius has reacted on himself. Men 
were so astonished and occupied by his poems 
that they have not been able to see his face and 
condition, or say, who was his father and his 
brethren ; or what life he led ; and at the short 
distance of three hundred years he is mythical, 
like Orpheus and Homer, and we have already 
seen the most fantastic theories plausibly urged, 
as that Raleigh and Bacon were the authors of 
the plays. 

Yet we pause expectant before the genius of 
Shakspeare — as if his biography were not yet 
written ; until the problem of the whole English 
race is solved. 

I see, among the lovers of this catholic 
genius, here present, a few, whose deeper know- 
ledge invites me to hazard an article of my liter- 
ary creed ; that Shakspeare, by his transcendant 

XI 



450 SHAKSPEARE 

reach of thought, so unites the extremes, that, 
whilst he has kept the theatre now for three 
centuries, and, like a street-bible, furnishes say- 
ings to the market, courts of law, the senate, 
and common discourse, — - he is yet to all wise 
men the companion of the closet. The student 
finds the solitariest place not solitary enough to 
read him ; and so searching is his penetration, 
and such the charm of his speech, that he still 
agitates the heart in age as in youth, and will, 
until it ceases to beat. 

Young men of a contemplative turn carry his 
sonnets in the pocket. With that book, the 
shade of any tree, a room in any inn, becomes 
a chapel or oratory in which to sit out their hap- 
piest hours. Later they find riper and manlier 
lessons in the plays. 

And secondly, he is the most robust and 
potent thinker that ever was, I find that it was 
not history, courts and affairs that gave him les- 
sons, but he that gave grandeur and prestige to 
them. There never was a writer who, seeming 
to draw every hint from outward history, the life 
of cities and courts, owed them so little. You 
shall never find in this world the barons or 
kings he depicted. 'T is fine for Englishmen to 
say, they only know history by Shakspeare. 



SHAKSPEARE 451 

The palaces they compass earth and sea to enter, 
the magnificence and personages of royal and 
imperial abodes, are shabby imitations and cari- 
catures of his, — clumsy pupils of his instruc- 
tion. There are no Warwicks, no Talbots, no 
Bolingbrokes, no Cardinals, no Harry Fifth, in 
real Europe, like his. The loyalty and royalty 
he drew were all his own. The real Elizabeths, 
Jameses and Louises were painted sticks before 
this magician. 

The unaffected joy of the comedy, — he lives 
in a gale, — contrasted with the grandeur of the 
tragedy, where he stoops to no contrivance, no 
pulpiting, but flies an eagle at the heart of the 
problem ; where his speech is a Delphi, — the 
great Nemesis that he is and utters. What a 
great heart of equity is he ! How good and 
sound and inviolable his innocency, that is never 
to seek, and never wrong, but speaks the pure 
sense of humanity on each occasion. He dwarfs 
all writers without a solitary exception. No 
egotism. The egotism of men is immense. It 
concealed Shakspeare for a century. His mind 
has a superiority such that the universities 
should read lectures on him, and conquer the 
unconquerable if they can. 



452 SHAKSPEARE 

There are periods fruitful of great men; 
others, barren ; or, as the world is always equal 
to itself, periods when the heat is latent, — others 
when it is given out. 

They are like the great wine years, — the vint- 
age of 1 847, is it ? or 1835? — which are not only 
noted in the carte of the table d*h6te, but which, 
it is said, are always followed by new vivacity 
in the politics of Europe. His birth marked a 
great wine year when wonderful grapes ripened 
in the vintage of God, when Shakspeare and 
Galileo were born within a few months of each 
other, and Cervantes was his exact contempo- 
rary, and, in short space before and after, Mon- 
taigne, Bacon, Spenser, Raleigh and Jonson. Yet 
Shakspeare, not by any inferiority of theirs, but 
simply by his colossal proportions, dwarfs the 
geniuses of Elizabeth as easily as the wits of 
Anne, or the poor slipshod troubadours of King 
Rene. 

In our ordinary experience of men there are 
some men so born to live well that, in whatever 
company they fall, — high or low, — they fit 
well, and lead it ! but, being advanced to a 
higher class, they are just as much in their ele- 
ment as before, and easily command : and being 
again preferred to selecter companions, find no 



SHAKSPEARE 453 

obstacle to ruling these as they did their earlier 
mates ; I suppose because they have more hu- 
manity than talent, whilst they have quite as 
much of the last as any of the company. It 
would strike you as comic, if I should give my 
own customary examples of this elasticity, 
though striking enough to me. I could name in 
this very company — or not going far out of it 
— very good types, but in order to be parlia- 
mentary, Franklin, Burns and Walter Scott are 
examples of the rule ; and king of men, by this 
grace of God also, is Shakspeare. 

The Pilgrims came to Plymouth in 1620. 
The plays of Shakspeare were not published 
until three years later. Had they been published 
earlier, our forefathers, or the most poetical 
among them, might have stayed at home to read 
them. 



XXIV 
HUMBOLDT 

AN ABSTRACT OF MR. EMERSON'S REMARKS MADE 
AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL ANNI- 
VERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF ALEXANDER VON 
HUMBOLDT, SEPTEMBER 14, 1869 



*« If a life prolonged to an advanced period bring with it sev- 
eral inconveniences to the individual, there is a compensation 
in the delight of being able to compare older states of know- 
ledge with that which now exists, and to see great advances in 
knowledge develop themselves under our eyes in departments 
which had long slept in inactivity." 

Humboldt, Letter to Ritter. 



HUMBOLDT 

HUMBOLDT was one of those wonders 
of the world, like Aristotle, like Julius 
Caesar, like the Admirable Crichton, who appear 
from time to time, as if to show us the possibili- 
ties of the human mind, the force and the range 
of the faculties,- — a universal man, not only 
possessed of great particular talents, but they 
were symmetrical, his parts were well put to- 
gether. As we know, a man's natural powers are 
often a sort of committee that slowly, one at a 
time, give their attention and action ; but Hum- 
boldt's were all united, one electric chain, so that 
a university, a whole French Academy, travelled 
in his shoes. With great propriety, he named 
his sketch of the results of science Cosmos. 
There is no other such survey or surveyor. 
The wonderful Humboldt, with his solid centre 
and expanded wings, marches like an army, 
gathering all things as he goes. How he reaches 
from science to science, from law to law, fold- 
ing away moons and asteroids and solar systems 
in the clauses and parentheses of his encyclo- 
paedic paragraphs ! There is no book like it ; 
none indicating such a battalion of powers. You 



458 HUMBOLDT 

could not put him on any sea or shore but his 
instant recollection of every other sea or shore 
illuminated this. 

He was properly a man of the world ; you 
could not lose him ; you could not detain him ; 
you could not disappoint him, for at any point 
on land or sea he found the objects of his re- 
searches. When he was stopped in Spain and 
could not get away, he turned round and inter- 
preted their mountain system, explaining the 
past history of the continent of Europe. He 
belonged to that wonderful German nation, the 
foremost scholars in all history, who surpass all 
others in industry, space and endurance. A 
German reads a literature whilst we are reading 
a book. One of their writers warns his country- 
men that it is not the Battle of Leipsic, but the 
Leipsic Fair Catalogue, which raises them above 
the French. I remember Cuvier tells us of fossil 
elephants ; that Germany has furnished the 
greatest number ; — not because there are more 
elephants in Germany, — oh no ; but because 
in that empire there is no canton without some 
well-informed person capable of making re- 
searches and publishing interesting results. I 
know that we have been accustomed to think 
they were too good scholars, that because they 



HUMBOLDT 459 

reflect, they never resolve, that " In a crisis no 
plan-maker was to be found in the empire ; " 
but we have lived to see now, for the second 
time in the history of Prussia, a statesman of 
the first class, with a clear head and an inflexible 
will. 



XXV 
WALTER SCOTT 

REMARKS AT THE CELEBRATION BY THE MASSACHU- 
SETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE CENTENNIAL 
ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, 
AUGUST 15, 1871 

Scott, the delight of generous boys. 



As far as Sir Walter Scott aspired to be known for a fine 
gentleman, so far our sympathies leave him. , . . Our con- 
cern is only with the residue, where the man Scott was 
warmed with a divine ray that clad with beauty every sheet 
of water, every bald hill in the country he looked upon, and 
so reanimated the well-nigh obsolete feudal history and illus- 
trated every hidden corner of a barren and disagreeable 
territory. 

Lecture, "Being and Seeing," 1838. 



WALTER SCOTT 

THE memory of Sir Walter Scott is dear 
to this Society, of which he was for ten 
years an honorary member. If only as an 
eminent antiquary who has shed light on the 
history of Europe and of the English race, he 
had high claims to our regard. But to the rare 
tribute of a centennial anniversary of his birth- 
day, which we gladly join with Scotland, and 
indeed with Europe, to keep, he is not less en- 
titled — perhaps he alone among literary men 
of this century is entitled — by the exceptional 
debt which all English-speaking men have gladly 
owed to his character and genius. I think no 
modern writer has inspired his readers with such 
affection to his own personality. I can well re- 
member as far back as when The Lord of the 
Isles was first republished in Boston, in 1815, 
— my own and my school-fellows' joy in the 
book.' Marmion and The Lay had gone be- 
fore, but we were then learning to spell. In 
the face of the later novels, we still claim that 
his poetry is the delight of boys. But this means 
that when we reopen these old books we all 
consent to be boys again. We tread over our 



464 WALTER SCOTT 

youthful grounds with joy. Critics have found 
them to be only rhymed prose. But I believe 
that many of those who read them in youth, 
when, later, they come to dismiss finally their 
school-days' library, will make some fond ex- 
ception for Scott as for Byron. 

It is easy to see the origin of his poems. 
His own ear had been charmed by old ballads 
crooned by Scottish dames at firesides, and writ- 
ten down from their lips by antiquaries ; and 
finding them now outgrown and dishonored by 
the new culture, he attempted to dignify and 
adapt them to the times in which he lived. 
Just so much thought, so much picturesque 
detail in dialogue or description as the old ballad 
required, so much suppression of details and 
leaping to the event, he would keep and use, 
but without any ambition to write a high poem 
after a classic model. He made no pretension 
to the lofty style of Spenser, or Milton, or 
Wordsworth. Compared with their purified 
songs, purified of all ephemeral color or ma- 
terial, his were vers de sociHL But he had the 
skill proper to vers de sociefe^ — skill to fit his 
verse to his topic, and not to write solemn 
pentameters alike on a hero or a spaniel. His 
good sense probably elected the ballad to make 



WALTER SCOTT 465 

his audience larger. He apprehended in ad- 
vance the immense enlargement of the reading 
public, which almost dates . from the era of his 
books, — which his books and Byron's inaugu- 
rated ; and which, though until then unheard 
of, has become familiar to the present time. 

If the success of his poems, however large, 
was partial, that of his novels was complete. 
The tone of strength in Waverley at once an- 
nounced the master, and was more than jus- 
tified by the superior genius of the following 
romances, up to the Bride of Lammermoor, 
which almost goes back to ^schylus for a coun- 
terpart as a painting of Fate, — leaving on every 
reader the impression of the highest and purest 
tragedy.' 

His power on the public mind rests on the 
singular union of two influences. By nature, 
by his reading and taste an aristocrat, in a time 
and country which easily gave him that bias, 
he had the virtues and graces of that class, and 
by his eminent humanity and his love of labor 
escaped its harm. He saw in the English Church 
the symbol and seal of all social order ; in the 
historical aristocracy the benefits to the state 
which Burke claimed for it; and in his own 
reading and research such store of legend and 



XI 



466 WALTER SCOTT 

renown as won his imagination to their cause. 
Not less his eminent humanity delighted in the 
sense and virtue and wit of the common people. 
In his own household and neighbors he found 
characters and pets of humble class, with whom 
he established the best relation, — small farmers 
and tradesmen, shepherds, fishermen, gypsies, 
peasant-girls, crones, — and came with these 
into real ties of mutual help and good will. 
From these originals he drew so genially his 
Jeanie Deans, his Dinmonts and Edie Ochil- 
trees, Caleb Balderstones and Fairservices, Cud- 
die Headriggs, Dominies, Meg Merrihes, and 
Jenny Rintherouts, full of life and reality ; 
making these, too, the pivots on which the 
plots of his stories turn ; and meantime without 
one word of brag of this discernment, — nay, 
this extreme sympathy reaching down to every 
beggar and beggar's dog, and horse and cow. In 
the number and variety of his characters he 
approaches Shakspeare. Other painters in verse 
or prose have thrown into literature a few type- 
figures ; as Cervantes, De Foe, Richardson, 
Goldsmith, Sterne and Fielding ; but Scott 
portrayed with equal strength and success every 
figure in his crowded company. 

riis strong good sense saved him from the 



WALTER SCOTT 467 

faults and foibles incident to poets, — from 
nervous egotism, sham modesty or jealousy. 
He played ever a manly part." With such a 
fortune and such a genius, we should look to 
see what heavy toll the Fates took of him, as 
of Rousseau or Voltaire, of Swift or Byron. 
But no : he had no insanity, or vice, or blemish. 
He was a thoroughly upright, wise and great- 
hearted man, equal to whatever event or fortune 
should try him. Disasters only drove him to 
immense exertion. What an ornament and 
safeguard is humor ! Far better than wit for 
a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so 
defends from the insanities. 

Under what rare conjunction of stars was this 
man born, that, wherever he lived, he found 
superior men, passed all his life in the best 
company, and still found himself the best of 
the best ! He was apprenticed at Edinburgh to 
a Writer to the Signet, and became a Writer to 
the Signet, and found himself in his youth and 
manhood and age in the society of Mackintosh, 
Horner, Jeffrey, Play fair, Dugald Stewart, Syd- 
ney Smith, Leslie, Sir William Hamilton, Wil- 
son, Hogg, De Quincey, — to name only some 
of his literary neighbors, and, as soon as he died, 
all this brilliant circle was broken up. 



XXVI 
SPEECH 

AT BANQUET IN HONOR OF THE CHINESE EMBASSY 
BOSTON, i860 



Nature creates in the East the uncontrollable yearning to 
escape from limitation into the vast and boundless, to use a 
freedom of fancy which plays with all works of Nature, great 
or minute, galaxy or grain of dust, as toys and words of the 
mind; inculcates a beatitude to be found in escape from all 
organization and all personality, and makes ecstasy an institu- 
tion. 



SPEECH 

AT THE BANQUET IN HONOR OF 
THE CHINESE EMBASSY 

MR. MAYOR : I suppose we are all of 
one opinion on this remarkable occasion 
of meeting the embassy sent from the oldest 
Empire in the world to the youngest Republic. 
All share the surprise and pleasure when the 
venerable Oriental dynasty — hitherto a roman- 
tic legend to most of us — suddenly steps into 
the fellowship of nations. This auspicious event, 
considered in connection with the late innova- 
tions in Japan, marks a new era, and is an irre- 
sistible result of the science which has given us 
the power of steam and the electric telegraph. 
It is the more 'welcome for the surprise. We 
had said of China, as the old prophet said of 
Egypt, " Her strength is to sit still." Her 
people had such elemental conservatism that 
by some wonderful force of race and national 
mann-ers, the wars and revolutions that occur 
in her annals have proved but momentary swells 
or surges on the pacific ocean of her history, 
leaving no trace. But in its immovability this 
race has claims. China is old, not in time only. 



472 THE CHINESE EMBASSY 

but in wisdom, which is gray hair to a nation, • — 
or, rather, truly seen, is eternal youth. As we 
know, China had the magnet centuries before 
Europe ; and block-printing or stereotype, and 
lithography, and gunpowder, and vaccination, 
and canals ; had anticipated Linnaeus's nomen- 
clature of plants ; had codes, journals, clubs, 
hackney coaches, and, thirty centuries before 
New York, had the custom of New Year's calls 
of comity and reconciliation. I need not men- 
tion its useful arts, — its pottery indispensable 
to the world, the luxury of silks, and its tea, the 
cordial of nations. But I must remember that 
she has respectable remains of astronomic sci- 
ence, and historic records of forgotten time, that 
have supplied important gaps in the ancient his- 
tory of the western nations. Then she has philo- 
sophers who cannot be spared. Confucius has 
not yet gathered all his fame. When Socrates 
heard that the oracle declared that he was the 
wisest of men, he said, it must mean that other 
men held that they were wise, but that he knew 
that he knew nothing. Confucius had ah*eady 
affirmed this of himself: and what we call the 
Golden Rule of Jesus, Confucius had uttered 
in the same terms five hundred years before. 
His morals, though addressed to a state of 



THE CHINESE EMBASSY 473 

society unlike ours, we read with profit to-day. 
His rare perception appears in his Golden 
Mean, his doctrine of Reciprocity, his unerring 
insight, — putting always the blame of our mis- 
fortunes on ourselves ; as when to the governor 
who complained of thieves, he said, " If you, 
sir, were not covetous, though you should re- 
ward them for it, they would not steal/' His 
ideal of greatness predicts Marcus Antoninus. 
At the same time, he abstained from paradox, 
and met the ingrained prudence of his nation 
by saying always, " Bend one cubit to straighten 
eight." 

China interests us at this moment in a point 
of politics. I am sure that gentlemen around 
me bear in mind the bill which the Hon. Mr. 
Jenckes of Rhode Island has twice attempted 
to carry through Congress, requiring that can- 
didates for public offices shall first pass exam- 
inations on their literary qualifications for the 
same. Well, China has preceded us, as well as 
England and France, in this essential correction 
of a reckless usage ; and the like high esteem 
of education appears in China in social life, to 
whose distinctions it is made an indispensable 
passport. 

It is gratifying to know that the advantages 



474 THE CHINESE EMBASSY 

of the new intercourse between the two coun- 
tries are daily manifest on the Pacific coast. 
The immigrants from Asia come in crowds. 
Their power of continuous labor, their versatil- 
ity in adapting themselves to new conditions, 
their stoical economy, are unlooked-for virtues. 
They send back to their friends, in China, 
money, new products of art, new tools, machin- 
ery, new foods, etc., and are thus establishing a 
commerce without limit. I cannot help adding, 
after what I have heard to-night, that I have 
read in the journals a statement from an Eng- 
lish source, that Sir Frederic Bruce attributed to 
Mr. Burlingame the merit of the happy reform 
in the relations of foreign governments to China. 
I am quite sure that I heard from Mr. Burlin- 
game in New York, in his last visit to America, 
that the whole merit of it belonged to Sir Fred- 
eric Bruce. It appears that the ambassadors 
were emulous in their magnanimity. It is cer- 
tainly the best guaranty for the interests of 
China and of humanity. 



XXVII 
REMARKS 

AT THE MEETING FOR ORGANIZING THE FREE 

S ASSOCIATIO: 

MAY 30, 1867 



In many forms we try 

To utter God's infinity. 

But the Boundless hath no form. 

And the Universal Friend 

Doth as far transcend 

An angel as a worm. 

The great Idea baffles wit. 
Language falters under it. 
It leaves the learned in the lurch; 
Nor art, nor power, nor toil can find 
The measure of the eternal Mind, 
Nor hymn nor prayer nor church. 



REMARKS 

AT THE MEETING FOR ORGANIZING 
THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

MR. CHAIRMAN : I hardly felt, in find- 
ing this house this morning, that I had 
come into the right hall. I came, as I sup- 
posed myself summoned, to a little committee 
meeting, for some practical end, where I should 
happily and humbly learn my lesson ; and I 
supposed myself no longer subject to your call 
when I saw this house. I have listened with 
great pleasure to the lessons which we have 
heard. To many, to those last spoken, I have 
found so much in accord with my own thought 
that I have little left to say. I think that it does 
great honor to the sensibility of the committee 
that they have felt the universal demand in the 
community for just the movement they have be- 
gun. I say again, in the phrase used by my friend, 
that we began many years ago, — yes, and many 
ages before that. But I think the necessity very 
great, and it has prompted an equal magnanim- 
ity, that thus invites all classes, all religious men, 
whatever their connections, whatever their spe- 
cialties, in whatever relation they stand to the 



478 FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

Christian Church, to unite in a movement of 
benefit to men, under the sanction of religion. 
We are all very sensible — it is forced on us 
every day — of the feeling that churches are 
outgrown ; that the creeds are outgrown ; that 
a technical theology no longer suits us. It is 
not the ill will of people — no, indeed, but the 
incapacity for confining themselves there. The 
church is not large enough for the man ; it can- 
not inspire the enthusiasm which is the parent 
of everything good in history, which makes the 
romance of history. For that enthusiasm you 
must have something greater than yourselves, 
and not less. 

The child, the young student, finds scope in 
his mathematics and chemistry or natural his- 
tory, because he finds a truth larger than he 
is ; finds himself continually instructed. But, in 
churches, every healthy and thoughtful mind 
finds itself in something less ; it is checked, 
cribbed, confined. And the statistics of the Amer- 
ican, the English and the German cities, show- 
ing that the mass of the population is leaving off 
going to church, indicate the necessity, which 
should have been foreseen, that the Church 
should always be new and extemporized, be- 
cause it is eternal and springs from the sentiment 



FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 479 

of men, or it does not exist.' One wonders some- 
times that the churches still retain so many vo- 
taries, when he reads the histories of the Church. 
There is an element of childish infatuation in 
them which does not exalt our respect for man. 
Read in Michelet, that in Europe, for twelve or 
fourteen centuries, God the Father had no tem- 
ple and no altar. The Holy Ghost and the Son 
of Mary were worshipped, and in the thirteenth 
century the First Person began to appear at the 
side of his Son, in pictures and in sculpture, for 
worship, but only through favor of his Son. 
These mortifying puerilities abound in religious 
history. But as soon as every man is apprised 
of the Divine Presence within his own mind, — 
is apprised that the perfect law of duty corre- 
sponds with the laws of chemistry, of vegetation, 
of astronomy, as face to face in a glass ; that the 
basis of duty, the order of society, the power of 
character, the wealth of culture, the perfection 
of taste, all draw their essence from this moral 
sentiment, then we have a religion that exalts, 
that commands all the social and all the private 
action. 

What strikes me in the sudden movement 
which brings together to-day so many sepa- 
rated friends, — separated but sympathetic, — 



48o FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

and what I expected to find here, was some 
practical suggestions by which we were to re- 
animate and reorganize for ourselves the true 
Church, the pure worship. Pure doctrine al- 
ways bears fruit in pure benefits. It is only 
by good works, it is only on the basis of active 
duty, that worship finds expression. What 
is best in the ancient religions was the sacred 
friendships between heroes, the Sacred Bands, 
and the relations of the Pythagorean disciples. 
Our Masonic institutions probably grew from 
the like origin. The close association which 
bound the first disciples of Jesus is another 
example ; and it were easy to find more. The 
soul of our late war, which will always be re- 
membered as dignifying it, was, first, the desire 
to abolish slavery in this country, and sec- 
ondly, to abolish the mischief of the war itself, 
by healing and saving the sick and wounded 
soldiers, — and this by the sacred bands of 
the Sanitary Commission. I wish that the vari- 
ous beneficent institutions which are spring- 
ing up, like joyful plants of wholesomeness, 
all over this country, should all be remem- 
bered as within the sphere of this committee, — 
almost all of them are represented here, — and 
that within this little band that has gathered 



FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 481 

here to-day, should grow friendship. The inter- 
ests that grow out of a meeting like this should 
bind us with new strength to the old eternal 
duties. 



XI 



XXVIII 
SPEECH 

AT THE SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE FREE 

RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION, AT TREMONT TEMPLE 

FRIDAY, MAY a8, 1869 



Thou metest him by centuries. 
And lo! he passes like the breeze; 
Thou seek' St in globe and galaxy. 
He hides in pure transparency; 
Thou ask' St in fountains and in fires. 
He is the essence that inquires. 



SPEECH 

AT SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

FRIENDS : I wish I could deserve anything 
of the kind expression of my friend, the 
President, and the kind good will which the 
audience signifies, but it is not in my power 
to-day to meet the natural demands of the 
occasion, and, quite against my design and my 
will, I shall have to request the attention of the 
audience to a few written remarks, instead of 
the more extensive statement which I had hoped 
to offer them. 

1 think we have disputed long enough. I 
think we might now relinquish our theological 
controversies to communities more idle and 
ignorant than we. I am glad that a more real- 
istic church is coming to be the tendency of 
society, and that we are likely one day to forget 
our obstinate polemics in the ambition to excel 
each other in good works. I have no wish to 
proselyte any reluctant mind, nor, I think, have 
I any curiosity or impulse to intrude on those 
whose ways of thinking differ from mine. But 
as my friend, your presiding officer, has asked 



486 FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

me to take at least some small part in this day's 
conversation, I am ready to give, as often before, 
the first simple foundation of my belief, that the 
Author of Nature has not left himself without a 
witness in any sane mind : that the moral senti- 
ment speaks to every man the law after which 
the Universe was made ; that we find parity, 
identity of design, through Nature, and benefit 
to be the uniform aim : that there is a force 
always at work to make the best better and the 
worst good/ We have had not long since pre- 
sented us by Max Miiller a valuable paragraph 
from St. Augustine, not at all extraordinary in 
itself, but only as coming from that eminent 
Father in the Church, and at that age, in which 
St. Augustine writes : " That which is now 
called the Christian religion existed among the 
ancients, and never did not exist from the plant- 
ing of the human race until Christ came in the 
flesh, at which time the true religion which 
already existed began to be called Christianity." 
I believe that not only Christianity is as old as 
the Creation, — not only every sentiment and 
precept of Christianity can be paralleled in other 
religious writings, — but more, that a man of 
religious susceptibility, and one at the same time 
conversant with many men, — say a much- 



FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 487 

travelled man, — can find the same idea in num- 
berless conversations. The religious find religion 
wherever they associate. When I find in people 
narrow religion, I find also in them narrow 
reading. Nothing really is so self-publishing, so 
divulgatory, as thought. It cannot be confined 
or hid. It is easily carried ; it takes no room ; 
the knowledge of Europe looks out into Persia 
and India, and to the very Kaffirs. Every pro- 
verb, every fine text, every pregnant jest, trav- 
els across the line ; and you will find it at Cape 
Town, or among the Tartars. We are all believ- 
ers in natural religion ; we all agree that the 
health and integrity of man is self-respect, self- 
subsistency, a regard to natural conscience. All 
education is to accustom him to trust himself, 
discriminate between his higher and lower 
thoughts, exert the timid faculties until they are 
robust, and thus train him to self-help, until he 
ceases to be an underling, a tool, and becomes a 
benefactor. I think wise men wish their religion 
to be all of this kind, teaching the agent to go 
alone, not to hang on the world as a pensioner, 
a permitted person, but an adult, self-searching 
soul, brave to assist or resist a world : only 
humble and docile before the source of the 
wisdom he has discovered within him. 



488 FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

As it is, every believer holds a different creed ; 
that is, all the churches are churches of one mem- 
ber. All our sects have refined the point of dif- 
ference between them. The point of difference 
that still remains between churches, or between 
classes, is in the addition to the moral code, that 
is, to natural religion, of somewhat positive and 
historical. I think that to be, as Mr. Abbot has 
stated it in his form, the one difference remain- 
ing. I object, of course, to the claim of miracu- 
lous dispensation, — certainly not to the doctrine 
of Christianity.' This claim impairs, to my 
mind, the soundness of him who makes it, and 
indisposes us to his communion. This comes 
the wrong way ; it comes from without, not 
within. This positive, historical, authoritative 
scheme is not consistent with our experience or 
our expectations. It is something not in Nature : 
it is contrary to that law of Nature which all 
wise men recognize ; namely, never to require 
a larger cause than is necessary to the effect. 
George Fox, the Quaker, said that, though he 
read of Christ and God, he knew them only 
from the like spirit in his own soul. We want 
all the aids to our moral training. We cannot 
spare the vision nor the virtue of the saints ; 
but let it be by pure sympathy, not with any 



FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 489 

personal or official claim. If you are childish, 
and exhibit your saint as a worker of wonders, 
a thaumaturgist, I am repelled. That claim 
takes his teachings out of logic and out of nature, 
and permits official and arbitrary senses to be 
grafted on the teachings. It is the praise of our 
New Testament that its teachings go to the 
honor and benefit of humanity, — that no better 
lesson has been taught or incarnated. Let it 
stand, beautiful and wholesome, with whatever 
is most like it in the teaching and practice of 
men ; but do not attempt to elevate it out 
of humanity, by saying, ' This was not a man,' 
for then you confound it with the fables of every 
popular religion, and my distrust of the story 
makes me distrust the doctrine as soon as it 
differs from my own belief. 

Whoever thinks a story gains by the prodi- 
gious, by adding something out of nature, robs it 
more than he adds. It is no longer an example, 
a model ; no longer a heart-stirring hero, but 
an exhibition, a wonder, an anomaly, removed 
out of the range of influence with thoughtful 
men. I submit that in sound frame of mind, 
we read or remember the religious sayings and 
oracles of other men, whether Jew or Indian, or 
Greek or Persian, only for friendship, only for 



490 FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

joy in the social identity which they open to 
us, and that these words would have no weight 
with us if we had not the same conviction al- 
ready. I find something stingy in the unwilling 
and disparaging admission of these foreign opin- 
ions — opinions from all parts of the world — 
by our churchmen, as if only to enhance by 
their dimness the superior light of Christianity. 
Meantime, observe, you cannot bring me too 
good a word, too dazzling a hope, too pene- 
trating an insight from the Jews. I hail every 
one with delight, as showing the riches of my 
brother, my fellow soul, who could thus think 
and thus greatly feel. Zealots eagerly fasten 
their eyes on the differences between their creed 
and yours, but the charm of the study is in 
finding the agreements, the identities, in all the 
religions of men." 

I am glad to hear each sect complain that 
they do not now hold the opinions they are 
charged with. The earth moves, and the mind 
opens. I am glad to believe society contains a 
class of humble souls who enjoy the luxury of 
a religion that does not degrade ; who think it 
the highest worship to expect of Heaven the 
most and the best ; who do not wonder that 
there was a Christ, but that there were not 



FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 491 

a thousand ; who have conceived an infinite 
hope for mankind ; who believe that the his- 
tory of Jesus is the history of every man, writ- 
ten large." 



XXIX 
ADDRESS 



AT THE OPENING OF THE CONCORD FREE 
PUBLIC LIBRARY 



The bishop of Cavaillon, Petrarch's friend, in a playful 
experiment locked up the poet's library, intending to exclude 
him from it for three days, but the poet's misery caused him to 
restore the key on the first evening. "And I verily believe 
I should have become insane," says Petrarch, <Mf my mind 
had longer been deprived of its necessary nourishment." 



ADDRESS 

AT THE OPENING OF THE CONCORD 
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY 

THE people of Massachusetts prize the 
simple political arrangement of towns, each 
independent in its local government, electing 
its own officers, assessing its taxes, caring for its 
schools, its charities, its highways. That town is 
attractive to its native citizens and to immigrants 
which has a healthy site, good land, good roads, 
good sidewalks, a good hotel ; still more, if it 
have an adequate town hall, good churches, 
good preachers, good schools, and if it avail 
itself of the Act of the Legislature authorizing 
towns to tax themselves for the establishment 
of a public library. Happier, if it contain citi- 
zens who cannot wait for the slow growth of 
the population to make these advantages ade- 
quate to the desires of the people, but make 
costly gifts to education, civility and culture, 
as in the act we are met to witness and acknow- 
ledge to-day. 

I think we cannot easily overestimate the 
benefit conferred. In the details of this muni- 
ficence, we may all anticipate a sudden and 



496 CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 

lasting prosperity to this ancient town, in the 
benefit of a noble library, which adds by the 
beauty of the building, and its skilful arrange- 
ment, a quite new attraction, — making readers 
of those who are not readers, — making scholars 
of those who only read newspapers or novels 
until now ; and whilst it secures a new and 
needed culture to our citizens, offering a strong 
attraction to strangers who are seeking a coun- 
try home to sit down here. And I am not sure 
that when Boston learns the good deed of Mr. 
Munroe, it will not be a little envious, nor 
rest until it has annexed Concord to the city. 
Our founder has found the many admirable 
examples which have lately honored the country, 
of benefactors who have not waited to bequeath 
colleges and hospitals, but have themselves 
built them, reminding us of Sir Isaac Newton's 
saying, " that they who give nothing before 
their death, never in fact give at all." 

I think it is not easy to exaggerate the utility 
of the beneficence which takes this form. If you 
consider what has befallen you when reading 
a poem, or a history, or a tragedy, or a novel, 
even, that deeply interested you, — how you 
forgot the time of day, the persons sitting in the 
room, and the engagements for the evening, you 



CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 497 

will easily admit the wonderful property of books 
to make all towns equal: that Concord Library 
makes Concord as good as Rome, Paris or Lon- 
don, for the hour ; — has the best of each of 
those cities in itself. Robinson Crusoe, could 
he have had a shelf of our books, could almost 
have done without his man Friday, or even the 
arriving ship. 

Every faculty casts itself into an art, and 
memory into the art of writing, that is, the 
book. The sedge Papyrus, which gave its name 
to our word paper, is of more importance to his- 
tory than cotton, or silver, or gold. Its first use 
for writing is between three and four thousand 
years old, and though it hardly grows now in 
Egypt, where I lately looked for it in vain, I 
always remember with satisfaction that I saw 
that venerable plant in 1833, growing wild at 
Syracuse, in Sicily, near the fountain of Are- 
thusa. 

The chairman of Mr. Munroe*s trustees has 
told you how old is the foundation of our village 
library, and we think we can trace in our modest 
records a correspondent effect of culture amidst 
our citizens. A deep religious sentiment is, in 
all times, an inspirer of the intellect, and that 
was not wanting here. The town was settled by 



498 CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 

a pious company of non-conformists from Eng- 
land, and the printed books of their pastor and 
leader, Rev. Peter Bulkeley, sometime fellow 
of Saint John's College in Cambridge, England, 
testify the ardent sentiment which they shared. 
" There is no people," said he to his little flock 
of exiles, " but will strive to excel in something. 
What can we excel in if not in holiness ? If we 
look to number, we are the fewest ; if to strength, 
we are the weakest ; if to wealth and riches, we 
are the poorest of all the people of God through 
the whole world. We cannot excel, nor so 
much as equal other people in these things, and 
if we come short in grace and holiness too, we 
are the most despicable people under heaven. 
Strive we therefore herein to excel, and suffer 
not this crown to be taken away from us." * 

The religious bias of our founders had its 
usual effect to secure an education to read their 
Bible and hymn-book, and thence the step was 
easy for active minds to an acquaintance with his- 
tory and with poetry. Peter Bulkeley sent his son 
John to the first class that graduated at Harvard 
College in 1642, and two sons to later classes. 
Major Simon Willard's son Samuel graduated at 
Harvard in 1659, and was for six years, from 
1 701 to 1707, vice-president of the college; and 



CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 499 

his son Joseph was president of the college from 
178 1 to 1804; and Concord counted fourteen 
graduates of Harvard in its first century, and its 
representation there increased with its gross 
population/ 

I possess the manuscript journal of a lady, 
native of this town (and descended from three 
of its clergymen), who removed into Maine, 
where she possessed a farm and a modest income. 
She was much addicted to journeying and not 
less to reading, and whenever she arrived in 
a town where was a good minister who had a 
library, she would persuade him to receive her 
as a boarder, and would stay until she had looked 
over all his volumes which were to her taste. On 
a very cold day, she writes in her diary, " Life 
truly resembles a river — ever the same — never 
the same ; and perhaps a greater variety of inter- 
nal emotions would be felt by remaining with 
books in one place than pursuing the waves 
which are ever the same. Is the melancholy bird 
of night, covered with the dark foliage of the 
willow and cypress, less gratified than the gay 
lark amid the flowers and suns ? I think that 
you never enjoy so much as in solitude with a 
book that meets the feelings," and in reference 
to her favorite authors, she adds, " The delight 



500 CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 

in others' superiority is my best gift from 
God."^ 

Lemuel Shattuck, by his history of the town, 
has made all of us grateful to his memory as a 
careful student and chronicler ; but events so 
important have occurred in the forty years since 
that book was published, that it now needs a 
second volume. 

Henry Thoreau we all remember as a man 
of genius, and of marked character, known to 
our farmers as the most skilful of surveyors, and 
indeed better acquainted with their forests and 
meadows and trees than themselves, but more 
widely known as the writer of some of the best 
books which have been written in this country, 
and which, I am persuaded, have not yet 
gathered half their fame. He, too, was an 
excellent reader. No man would have rejoiced 
more than he in the event of this day. In a 
private letter to a lady, he writes, " Do you read 
any noble verses ? For my part, they have been 
the only things I remembered, — or that which 
occasioned them, — when all things else were 
blurred and defaced. "* All things have put on 
mourning but they : for the elegy itself is some 
victorious melody in you, escaping from the 
wreck. It is a relief to read some true books 



CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 501 

wherein all are equally dead, equally alive. I 
think the best parts of Shakspeare would only 
be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting 
events. I have found it so : and all the more, 
that they are not intended for consolation." 

Nathaniel Hawthorne's residence in the 
Manse gave new interest to that house whose 
windows overlooked the retreat of the British 
soldiers in 1775, and his careful studies of Con- 
cord life and history are known wherever the 
English language is spoken." 

I know the word literature has in many ears 
a hollow sound. It is thought to be the harm- 
less entertainment of a few fanciful persons, and 
not at all to be the interest of the multitude. 
To these objections, which proceed on the cheap 
notion that nothing but what grinds corn, roasts 
mutton and weaves cotton, is anything worth, I 
have little to say. There are utilitarians who 
prefer that Jesus should have wrought as a 
carpenter, and Saint Paul as a tent-maker. But 
literature is the record of the best thoughts. 
Every attainment and discipline which increases 
a man's acquaintance with the invisible world 
lifts his being. Everything that gives him a new 
perception of beauty multiplies his pure enjoy- 
ments. A river of thought is always running 



502 CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 

out of the invisible world into the mind of man. 
Shall not they who received the largest streams 
spread abroad the healing waters ? 

It was the symbolical custom of the ancient 
Mexican priests, after the annual extinction of 
the household fires of their land, to procure in 
the temple fire from the sun, and thence distrib- 
ute it as a sacred gift to every hearth in the na- 
tion. It is a just type of the service rendered to 
mankind by wise men. Homer and Plato and 
Pindar and Shakspeare serve many more than 
have heard their names. Thought is the most 
volatile of all things. It cannot be contained in 
any cup, though you shut the lid never so tight. 
Once brought into the world, it runs over the 
vessel which received it into all minds that love 
it. The very language we speak thinks for us 
by the subtle distinctions which already are 
marked for us by its words, and every one of 
these is the contribution of the wit of one and 
another sagacious man in all the centuries of 
time. 

Consider that it is our own state of mind at 
any time that makes our estimate of life and the 
world. If you sprain your foot, you will pre- 
sently come to think that Nature has sprained 
hers. Everything begins to look so slow and 



CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 503 

inaccessible. And when you sprain your mind, 
by gloomy reflection on your failures and vexa- 
tions, you come to have a bad opinion of life. 
Think how indigent Nature must appear to the 
blind, the deaf, and the idiot. Now if you can 
kindle the imagination by a new thought, by 
heroic histories, by uplifting poetry, instantly 
you expand, — are cheered, inspired, and be- 
come wise, and even prophetic. Music works 
this miracle for those who have a good ear; 
what omniscience has music ! so absolutely im- 
personal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret 
sorrow reached. Yet to a scholar the book is as 
good or better. There is no hour of vexation 
which on a little reflection will not find diver- 
sion and relief in the library. His companions 
are few : at the moment, he has none : but, year 
by year, these silent friends supply their place. 
Many times the reading of a book has made the 
fortune of the man, — has decided his way of 
life. It makes friends. 'Tis a tie between men 
to have been delighted with the same book. 
Every one of us is always in search of his friend, 
and when unexpectedly he finds a stranger 
enjoying the rare poet or thinker who is dear 
to his own soHtude, — it is like finding a bro- 
ther. Dr. Johnson hearing that Adam Smith, 



504 CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 

whom he had once met, relished rhyme, said, 
" If I had known that, I should have hugged 
him." 

We expect a great man to be a good reader, 
or in proportion to the spontaneous power 
should be the assimilating power. There is a 
wonderful agreement among eminent men of 
all varieties of character and condition in their 
estimate of books. Julius Caesar, when ship- 
wrecked, and forced to swim for life, did not 
gather his gold, but took his Commentaries 
between his teeth and swam for the shore. Even 
the wild and warlike Arab Mahomet said, " Men 
are either learned or learning : the rest are block- 
heads." The great Duke of Marlborough could 
not encamp without his Shakspeare. The Duch- 
ess d'Abrantes, wife of Marshal Junot, tells us 
that Bonaparte, in hastening out of France to 
join his army in Germany, tossed his journals 
and books out of his travelling carriage as fast 
as he had read them, and strewed the highway 
with pamphlets. Napoleon's reading could not 
be large, but his criticism is sometimes admir- 
able, as reported by Las Casas ; and Napoleon 
was an excellent writer. Montesquieu, one of 
the greatest minds that France has produced, 
writes : " The love of study is in us almost the 



CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 505 

only eternal passion. All the others quit us in 
proportion as this miserable machine which gives 
them to us approaches its ruin. Study has been 
for me the sovereign remedy against the dis- 
gusts of life, never having had a chagrin which 
an hour of reading has not put to flight." Hear 
the testimony of Seldon, the oracle of the Eng- 
lish House of Commons in Cromwell's time. 
" Patience Is the chiefest fruit of study. A man, 
that strives to make himself a different thing 
from other men by much reading gains this 
chiefest good, that in all fortunes he hath some- 
thing to entertain and comfort himself withal." 
j I have found several humble men and women 
who gave as affectionate, if not as judicious tes- 
timony to their readings. One curious witness 
was that of a Shaker who, when showing me the 
houses of the Brotherhood, and a very modest 
bookshelf, said there was Milton's Paradise 
Lost, and some other books in the house, and 
added " that he knew where they were, but he 
I took up a sound cross In not reading them." 

In 161 8 (8th March) John Kepler came 
upon the discovery of the law connecting the 
mean distances of the planets with the periods 
of their revolution about the sun, that the 
squares of the times vary as the cubes of the 



5o6 CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 

distances. And he writes, " It is now eighteen 
months since I got the first glimpse of light, — 
three months since the dawn, — very few days 
since the unveiled sun, most admirable to gaze 
on, burst out upon me. Nothing holds me. 
I will indulge in my sacred fury. I will triumph 
over mankind by the honest confession that I 
have stolen the golden vases of the Egyptians ^ 
to build up a tabernacle for my God far away 
from the confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, 
I rejoice ; if you are angry, I can bear it : the 
die is cast ; the book is written ; to be read 
either now or by posterity. I care not which. 
It may well wait a century for a reader, since 
God has waited six thousand years for an ob- 
server like myself." 

In books I have the history or the energy 
of the past. Angels they are to us of entertain- 
ment, sympathy and provocation. With them 
many of us spend the most of our life, — these 
silent guides, — these tractable prophets, histo- 
rians, and singers, whose embalmed life is the 
highest feat of art ; who now cast their moon- 
light illumination over solitude, weariness and 
fallen fortunes. You say, *t is a languid plea- 
sure. Yes, but its tractableness, coming and 
going like a dog at our bidding, compensates 



CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 507 

the quietness, and contrasts with the slowness 
of fortune and the inaccessibleness of persons. 

You meet with a man of science, a good 
thinker or good wit, — but you do not know 
how to draw out of him that which he knows. 
But the book is a sure friend, always ready at 
your first leisure, — opens to the very page 
you desire, and shuts at your first fatigue, — 
as possibly your professor might not. 

It is a tie between men to have read the same 
book, and it is a disadvantage not to have read 
the book your mates have read, or not to have 
read it at the same time, so that it may take the 
place in your culture it does in theirs, and you 
shall understand their allusions to it, and not 
give it more or less emphasis than they do. 
Yet the strong character does not need this 
sameness of culture. The imagination knows 
its own food in ^every pasture, and if it has 
not had the Arabian Nights, Prince Le Boo, or 
Homer or Scott, has drawn equal delight and 
terror from haunts and passages which you will 
hear of with envy. 

In saying these things for books, I do not 
for a moment forget that they are secondary, 
mere means, and only used in the oiF-hours, 
only in the pause, and, as it were, the sleep, or 



5o8 CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY 

passive state of the mind. The intellect reserves 
all its rights. Instantly, when the mind itself 
wakes, all books, all past acts are forgotten, 
huddled aside as impertinent in the august 
presence of the creator. Their costliest benefit 
is that they set us free from themselves ; for 
they wake the imagination and the sentiment, — 
and in their inspirations we dispense with books. 
Let me add then, — read proudly ; put the duty 
of being read invariably on the author. If he is 
not read, whose fault is it ? I am quite ready 
to be charmed, — but I shall not make believe 
I am charmed. 

But there is no end to the praise of books, 
to the value of the library. Who shall estimate 
their influence on our population where all the 
millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations 
that man can communicate all his thoughts, 
discoveries and virtues to records that may last 
for centuries. 

But I am pleading a cause which in the event 
of this day has already won : and I am happy 
in the assurance that the whole assembly to 
whom I speak entirely sym.pathize in the feehng 
of this town in regard to the new Library, and 
its honored Founder. 



LIBRARY Of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 
JUN 20 »906 
opyright Entry 

CLASS ^R^XXC. No 
COPY B. 



7)^\ 



XXX 

THE FORTUNE OF THE 
REPUBLIC 



There is a mystery in the soul of state 

Which hath an operation more divine 

Than breath or pen can give expression to.'* 



THE FORTUNE OF THE 
REPUBLIC 

IT is a rule that holds in economy as well as 
in hydraulics that you must have a source 
higher than your tap. The mills, the shops, 
the theatre and the caucus, the college and the 
church, have all found out this secret. The sail- 
ors sail by chronometers that do not lose two 
or three seconds in a year, ever since Newton 
explained to Parliament that the way to improve 
navigation was to get good watches, and to offer 
public premiums for a better time-keeper than 
any then in use. The manufacturers rely on 
turbines of hydraulic perfection ; the carpet-mill, 
on mordants and dyes which exhaust the skill 
of the chemist ; the calico print, on designers of 
genius who draw the wages of artists, not 
of artisans. Wedgwood, the eminent potter, 
bravely took the sculptor Flaxman to counsel, 
who said, "Send to Italy, search the museums 
for the forms of old Etruscan vases, urns, water- 
pots, domestic and sacrificial vessels of all 
kinds." They built great works and called 
their manufacturing village Etruria. Flaxman, 
with his Greek taste, selected and combined 



512 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

the loveliest forms, which were executed in 
English clay ; sent boxes of these as gifts to 
every court of Europe, and formed the taste of 
the world. It was a renaissance of the break- 
fast-table and china-closet. The brave manu- 
facturers made their fortune. The jewellers 
imitated the revived models in silver and gold. 

The theatre avails itself of the best talent of 
poet, of painter, and of amateur of taste, to make 
the ensemble of dramatic effect. The marine 
insurance office has its mathematical counsellor 
to settle averages ; the life-assurance, its table of 
annuities. The wine-merchant has his analyst 
and taster, the more exquisite the better. He 
has also, I fear, his debts to the chemist as well 
as to the vineyard. 

Our modern wealth stands on a few staples, 
and the interest nations took in our war was ex- 
asperated by the importance of the cotton trade. 
And what is cotton ? One plant out of some 
two hundred thousand known to the botanist, 
vastly the larger part of which are reckoned 
weeds. What is a weed ? A plant whose virtues 
have not yet been discovered, — every one of the 
two hundred thousand probably yet to be of 
utility in the arts. As Bacchus of the vine, Ceres 
of the wheat, as Arkwright and Whitney were 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 513 

the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will 
yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is 
not a property in Nature but a mind is born 
to seek and find it. For it is not the plants or 
the animals, innumerable as they are, nor the 
whole magazine of material nature that can give 
the sum of power, but the infinite applicability 
of these things in the hands of thinking man, 
every new application being equivalent to a new 
material." 

Our sleepy civilization, ever since Roger 
Bacon and Monk Schwartz invented gunpow- 
der, has built its whole art of war, all fortification 
by land and sea, all drill and military education, 
on that one compound, — all is an extension of 
a gun-barrel, — and is very scornful about bows 
and arrows, and reckons Greeks and Romans 
and Middle Ages little better than Indians and 
bow-and-arrow times. As if the earth, water, 
gases, lightning and caloric had not a million 
energies, the discovery of any one of which could 
change the art of war again, and put an end to 
war by the exterminating forces man can 
apply. 

Now, if this is true in all the useful and in 
the fine arts, that the direction must be drawn 
from a superior source or there will be no good 

XI 



514 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

work, does it hold less in our social and civil 
life? 

In our popular politics you may note that each 
aspirant who rises above the crowd, however at 
first making his obedient apprenticeship in party 
tactics, if he have sagacity, soon learns that it is 
by no means by obeying the vulgar weathercock 
of his party, the resentments, the fears and whims 
of it, that real power is gained, but that he must 
often face and resist the party, and abide by his 
resistance, and put them in fear ; that the only 
title to their permanent respect, and to a larger 
following, is to see for himself what is the real 
public interest, and to stand for that ; — that is 
a principle, and all the cheering and hissing of 
the crowd must by and by accommodate itself 
to it. Our times easily afford you very good 
examples. 

The law of water and all fluids is true of wit. 
Prince Metternich said, " Revolutions begin in 
the best heads and run steadily down to the 
populace." It is a very old observation ; not 
truer because Metternich said it, and not less 
true. 

There have been revolutions which were not 
in the interest of feudalism and barbarism, but 
in that of society. And these are distinguished 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 515 

not by the numbers of the combatants nor the 
numbers of the slain, but by the motive. No 
interest now attaches to the wars of York and 
Lancaster, to the wars of German, French and 
Spanish emperors, which were only dynastic 
wars, but to those in which a principle was 
involved. These are read with passionate inter- 
est and never lose their pathos by time. When 
the cannon is aimed by ideas, when men with 
religious convictions are behind it, when men 
die for what they live for, and the mainspring 
that works daily urges them to hazard all, then 
the cannon articulates its explosions with the 
voice of a man, then the rifle seconds the can- 
non and the fowling-piece the rifle, and the 
women make the cartridges, and all shoot at 
one mark; then gods join in the combat; then 
poets are born, and the better code of laws at 
last records the victory. 

Now the culmination of these triumphs of 
humanity — and which did virtually include 
the extinction of slavery — is the planting of 
America. 

At every moment some one country more 
than any other represents the sentiment and 
the future of mankind. None will doubt that 
America occupies this place in the opinion of 



5i6 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

nations, as is proved by the fact of the vast 
immigration into this country from all the 
nations of Western and Central Europe. And 
when the adventurers have planted themselves 
and looked about, they send back all the money 
they can spare to bring their friends. 

Meantime they find this country just passing 
through a great crisis in its history, as neces- 
sary as lactation or dentition or puberty to the 
human individual. We are in these days set- 
tling for ourselves and our descendants ques- 
tions which, as they shall be determined in one 
way or the other, will make the peace and pro- 
sperity or the calamity of the next ages. The 
questions of Education, of Society, of Labor, 
the direction of talent, of character, the nature 
and habits of the American, may well occupy 
us, and more the question of Religion. 

The new conditions of mankind in America 
are really favorable to progress, the removal of 
absurd restrictions and antique inequalities. The 
mind is always better the more it is used, and 
here it is kept in practice. The humblest is 
daily challenged to give his opinion on practical 
questions, and while civil and social freedom 
exists, nonsense even has a favorable effect. 
Cant is good to provoke common sense. . . . 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 517 

The trance-mediums, the rebel paradoxes, ex- 
asperate the common sense. The wilder the 
paradox, the more sure is Punch to put it in 
the pillory. 

The lodging the power in the people, as in 
republican forms, has the effect of holding 
things closer to common sense ; for a court or 
an aristocracy, which must always be a small 
minority, can more easily run into follies than a 
republic, which has too many observers — each 
with a vote in his hand — to allow its head 
to be turned by any kind of nonsense: since 
hunger, thirst, cold, the cries of children and 
debt are always holding the masses hard to 
the essential duties. 

One hundred years ago the American peo- 
ple attempted to carry out the bill of political 
rights to an almost ideal perfection. They 
have made great strides in that direction since. 
They are now proceeding, instructed by their 
success and by their many failures, to carry 
out, not the bill of rights, but the bill of human 
duties. 

And look what revolution that attempt in- 
volves. Hitherto government has been that of 
the single person or of the aristocracy. In this 
country the attempt to resist these elements, it 



5i8 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

is asserted, must throw us into the government 
not quite of mobs, but in practice of an inferior 
class of professional politicians, who by means 
of newspapers and caucuses really thrust their 
unworthy minority into the place of the old 
aristocracy on the one side, and of the good, 
industrious, well-taught but unambitious popu- 
lation on the other, win the posts of power 
and give their direction to affairs. Hence lib- 
eral congresses and legislatures ordain, to the 
surprise of the people, equivocal, interested and 
vicious measures. The men themselves are 
suspected and charged with lobbying and being 
lobbied. No measure is attempted for itself, 
but the opinion of the people is courted in the 
first place, and the measures are perfunctorily 
carried through as secondary. We do not choose 
our own candidate, no, nor any other man's 
first choice, — but only the available candidate, 
whom, perhaps, no man loves. We do not 
speak what we think, but grope after the prac- 
ticable and available. Instead of character, there 
is a studious exclusion of character. The people 
are feared and flattered. They are not repri- 
manded. The country is governed in bar-rooms, 
and in the mind of bar-rooms. The low can 
best win the low, and each aspirant for power 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 519 

vies with his rival which can stoop lowest, and 
depart widest from himself. 

The partisan on moral, even on religious 
questions, will choose a proven rogue who can 
answer the tests, over an honest, affectionate, 
noble gentleman ; the partisan ceasing to be a 
man that he may be a sectarian. 

The spirit of our political economy is low and 
degrading. The precious metals are not so 
precious as they are esteemed. Man exists for 
his own sake, and not to add a laborer to the 
state. The spirit of our political action, for 
the most part, considers nothing less than the 
sacredness of man. Party sacrifices man to the 
measure.' 

We have seen the great party of property 
and education in the country drivelHng and 
huckstering away, for views of party fear or 
advantage, every principle of humanity and the 
dearest hopes of mankind ; the trustees of power 
only energetic when mischief could be done, 
imbecile as corpses when evil was to be pre- 
vented. 

Our great men succumb so far to the forms 
of the day as to peril their integrity for the sake 
of adding to the weight of their personal char- 
acter the authority of office, or making a real 



520 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

government titular. Our politics are full of 
adventurers, who having by education and social 
innocence a good repute in the state, break 
away from the law of honesty and think they 
can afford to join the deviFs party. 'T is odious, 
these offenders in high life. You rally to the 
support of old charities and the cause of litera- 
ture, and there, to be sure, are these brazen 
faces. In this innocence you are puzzled how 
to meet them ; must shake hands with them, 
under protest.' We feel toward them as the 
minister about the Cape Cod farm, — in the old 
time when the minister was still invited, in the 
spring, to make a prayer for the blessing of a 
piece of land, — the good pastor being brought 
to the spot, stopped short : " No, this land does 
not want a prayer, this land wants manure." 

• ** *Tis virtue which they want, and wanting it. 
Honor no garment to their backs can fit.** * 

Parties keep the old names, but exhibit a 
surprising fugacity in creeping out of one 
snake-skin into another of equal ignominy 
and lubricity, and the grasshopper on the 
turret of Faneuil Hall gives a proper hint of 
the men below. 

Everything yields. The very glaciers are 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 521 

viscous, or relegate into conformity, and the 
stifFest patriots falter and compromise ; so that 
will cannot be depended on to save us. 

How rare are acts of will ! We are all living 
according to custom ; we do as other people do, 
and shrink from an act of our own. Every such 
act makes a man famous, and we can all count 
the few cases — half a dozen in our time — 
when a public man ventured to act as he thought 
without waiting for orders or for public opinion. 
John Quincy Adams was a man of an audacious 
independence that always kept the public curi- 
osity alive in regard to what he might do. 
None could predict his word, and a whole con- 
gress could not gainsay it when it was spoken. 
General Jackson was a man of will, and his 
phrase on one memorable occasion, " I will take 
the responsibility," is a proverb ever since.' 

The American marches with a careless swag- 
ger to the height of power, very heedless of his 
own liberty or of other peoples*, in his reckless 
confidence that he can have all he wants, risk- 
ing all the prized charters of the human race, 
bought with battles and revolutions and religion, 
gambling them all away for a paltry selfish 
gain. 

He sits secure In the possession of his vast 



522 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

domain, rich beyond all experience in resources, 
sees its inevitable force unlocking itself in ele- 
mental order day by day, year by year ; looks 
from his coal-fields, his wheat-bearing prairie, 
his gold-mines, to his two oceans on either 
side, and feels the security that there can be no 
famine in a country reaching through so many 
latitudes, no want that cannot be supplied, no 
danger from any excess of importation of art or 
learning into a country of such native strength, 
such immense digestive power. 

In proportion to the personal ability of each 
man, he feels the invitation and career which 
the country opens to him. He is easily fed with 
wheat and game, with Ohio wine, but his brain 
is also pampered by finer draughts, by political 
power and by the power in the railroad board, 
in the mills, or the banks. This elevates his 
spirits, and gives, of course, an easy self-reliance 
that makes him self-willed and unscrupulous. 

I think this levity is a reaction on the people 
from the extraordinary advantages and invita- 
tions of their condition. When we are most dis- 
turbed by their rash and immoral voting, it is not 
malignity, but recklessness. They are careless 
of politics, because they do not entertain the 
possibility of being seriously caught in meshes 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 523 

of legislation. They feel strong and irresistible. 
They believe that what they have enacted they 
can repeal if they do not like it. But one may 
run a risk once too often. They stay away from 
the polls, saying that one vote can do no good ! 
Or they take another step, and say ' One vote 
can do no harm ! ' and vote for something which 
they do not approve, because their party or set 
votes for it. Of course this puts them in the 
power of any party having a steady interest to 
promote which does not conflict manifestly with 
the pecuniary interest of the voters. But if they 
should come to be interested in themselves and 
in their career, they would no more stay away 
from the election than from their own counting- 
room or the house of their friend. 

The people are right-minded enough on 
ethical questions, but they must pay their debts, 
and must have the means of living well, and not 
pinching. So it is useless to rely on them to 
go to a meeting, or to give a vote, if any check 
from this must-have-the-money side arises. If 
a customer looks grave at their newspaper, or 
damns their member of Congress, they take 
another newspaper, and vote for another man. 
They must have money, for a certain style of 
living fast becomes necessary ; they must take 



524 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

wine at the hotel, first, for the look of it, and 
second, for the purpose of sending the bottle 
to two or three gentlemen at the table ; and pre- 
sently because they have got the taste, and do 
not feel that they have dined without it. 

The record of the election now and then 
alarms people by the all but unanimous choice 
of a rogue and a brawler. But how was it done ? 
What lawless mob burst into the polls and 
threw in these hundreds of ballots in defiance 
of the magistrates ? This was done by the very 
men you know, — the mildest, most sensible, 
best-natured people. The only account of this 
is, that they have been scared or warped into 
some association in their mind of the candidate 
with the interest of their trade or of their pro- 
perty. 

Whilst each cabal urges its candidate, and at 
last brings, with cheers and street demonstra- 
tions, men whose names are a knell to all hope 
of progress, the good and wise are hidden in their 
active retirements, and are quite out of question. 

"These we must join to wake, for these are of the strain 
That justice dare defend, and will the age maintain.**' 

Yet we know, all over this country, men of 
integrity, capable of action and of affairs, with the 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 525 

deepest sympathy in all that concerns the pub- 
lic, mortified by the national disgrace, and quite 
capable of any sacrifice except of their honor. 

Faults in the working appear in our system, 
as in all, but they suggest their own remedies. 
After every practical mistake out of which any 
disaster grows, the people wake and correct it 
with energy. And any disturbances in politics, 
in civil or foreign wars, sober them, and instantly 
show more virtue and conviction in the popular 
vote. In each new threat of faction the ballot 
has been, beyond expectation, right and decisive. 

It is ever an inspiration, God only knows 
whence ; a sudden, undated perception of eternal 
right coming into and correcting things that were 
wrong ; a perception that passes through thou- 
sands as readily as through one. 

The gracious lesson taught by science to this 
country is that the history of Nature from first 
to last is incessant advance from less to more, 
from rude to finer organization, the globe of 
matter thus conspiring with the principle of un- 
dying hope in man. Nature works in immense 
time, and spends individuals and races prodi- 
gally to prepare new individuals and races. The 
lower kinds are one after one extinguished ; the 



526 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

higher forms come in.' The history of civiliza- 
tion, or the refining of certain races to wonderful 
power of performance, is analogous ; but the 
best civilization yet is only valuable as a ground 
of hope. 

Ours is the country of poor men. Here is 
practical democracy ; here is the human race 
poured out over the continent to do itself jus- 
tice ; all mankind in its shirt-sleeves ; not grim- 
acing like poor rich men in cities, pretending to 
be rich, but unmistakably taking off its coat 
to hard work, when labor is sure to pay.^ This 
through all the country. For really, though you 
see wealth in the capitals, it is only a sprinkling 
of rich men in the cities and at sparse points ; 
the bulk of the population is poor. In Maine, 
nearly every man is a lumberer. In Massachu- 
setts, every twelfth man is a shoemaker, and 
the rest, millers, farmers, sailors, fishermen. 

Well, the result is, instead of the doleful ex- 
perience of the European economist, who tells 
us, " In almost all countries the condition of the 
great body of the people is poor and miserable," 
here that same great body has arrived at a sloven 
plenty, — ham and corn-cakes, tight roof and 
coals enough have been attained ; an unbuttoned 
comfort, not clean, not thoughtful, far from 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 527 

polished, without dignity in his repose ; the man 
awkward and restless if he have not something 
to do, but honest and kind for the most part, 
understanding his own rights and stiff to main- 
tain them, and disposed to give his children a 
better education than he received. 

The steady improvement of the public schools 
in the cities and the country enables the farmer 
or laborer to secure a precious primary educa- 
tion. It is rare to find a born American who 
cannot read and write. The facility with which 
clubs are formed by young men for discussion 
of social, political and intellectual topics secures 
the notoriety of the questions. 

Our institutions, of which the town is the unit, 
are all educational, for responsibility educates 
fast. The town-meeting is, after the high-school, 
a higher school.' The legislature, to which every 
good farmer goes once on trial, is a superior 
academy. 

The result appears in the power of invention, 
the freedom of thinking, in the readiness for 
reforms, eagerness for novelty, even for all the 
follies of false science ; in the antipathy to secret 
societies, in the predominance of the democratic 
party in the politics of the Union, and in the 
voice of the public even when irregular and 



528 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

vicious, — the voice of mobs, the voice of lynch 
law, — because it is thought to be, on the whole, 
the verdict, though badly spoken, of the greatest 
number. 

All this forwardness and self-reliance, cover 
self-government ; proceed on the belief that as 
the people have made a government they can 
make another ; that their union and law are not 
in their memory, but in their blood and condi- 
tion. If they unmake a law, they can easily make 
a new one. In Mr. Webster's imagination the 
American Union was a huge Prince Rupert's 
drop, which will snap into atoms if so much as 
the smallest end be shivered off. Now the fact 
is quite different from this. The people are 
loyal, law-abiding. They prefer order, and have 
no taste for misrule and uproar. 

America was opened after the feudal mischief 
was spent, and so the people made a good start. 
We began well. No inquisition here, no kings, 
no nobles, no dominant church. Here heresy 
has lost its terrors. We have eight or ten relig- 
ions in every large town, and the most that comes 
of it is a degree or two on the thermometer of 
fashion ; a pew in a particular church gives an 
easier entrance to the subscription ball. 

We began with freedom, and are defended 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 529 

from shocks now for a century by the facility 
with which through popular assemblies every 
necessary measure of reform can instantly be car- 
ried. A congress is a standing insurrection, and 
escapes the violence of accumulated grievance. 
As the globe keeps its identity by perpetual 
change, so our civil system, by perpetual appeal 
to the people and acceptance of its reforms. 

The government is acquainted with the opin- 
ions of all classes, knows the leading men in the 
middle class, knows the leaders of the humblest 
class. The President comes near enough to 
these ; if he does not, the caucus does, the 
primary ward and town-meeting, and what is 
important does reach him. 

The men, the women, all over this land shrill 
their exclamations of impatience and indignation 
at what is short-coming or is unbecoming in 
the government, — at the want of humanity, of 
morality, — ever on broad grounds of general 
justice, and not on the class-feeling which nar- 
rows the perception of English, French, German 
people at home. 

In this fact, that we are a nation of individuals, 
that we have a highly intellectual organization, 
that we can see and feel moral distinctions, and 
that on such an organization sooner or later the 

IX 



530 THE FORTUNE Of THE REPUBLIC 

moral laws must tell, to such ears must speak, 
— in this is our hope. For if the prosperity of 
this country has been merely the obedience 
of man to the guiding of Nature, — of great 
rivers and prairies, — yet is there fate above 
fate, if we choose to spread this language ; or if 
there is fate in corn and cotton, so is there fate 
in thought, — this, namely, that the largest 
thought and the widest love are born to victory, 
and must prevail. 

The revolution is the work of no man, but the 
eternal effervescence of Nature. It never did not 
work. And we say that revolutions beat all the 
insurgents, be they never so determined and 
politic ; that the great interests of mankind, 
being at every moment through ages in favor of 
justice and the largest liberty, will always, from 
time to time, gain on the adversary and at last 
win the day. Never country had such a fortune, 
as men call fortune, as this, in its geography, its 
history, and in its majestic possibilities. 

We have much to learn, much to correct, — 
a great deal of lying vanity. The spread eagle 
must fold his foolish wings and be less of a pea- 
cock ; must keep his wings to carry the thunder- 
bolt when he is commanded. We must realize 
our rhetoric and our rituals. Our national flag 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 531 

is not affecting, as it should be, because it does 
not represent the population of the United 
States, but some Baltimore or Chicago or Cin- 
cinnati or Philadelphia caucus ; not union or jus- 
tice, but selfishness and cunning. If we never 
put on the liberty-cap until we were freemen by- 
love and self-denial, the liberty-cap would mean 
something. I wish to see America not like the 
old powers of the earth, grasping, exclusive and 
narrow, but a benefactor such as no country ever 
was, hospitable to all nations, legislating for all 
nationalities. Nations were made to help each 
other as much as families were ; and all advance- 
ment is by ideas, and not by brute force or me- 
chanic force. 

In this country, with our practical understand- 
ing, there is, at present, a great sensualism, a 
headlong devotion to trade and to the conquest 
of the continent, — to each man as large a share 
of the same as he can carve for himself, — an ex- 
travagant confidence in our talent and activity, 
which becomes, whilst successful, a scornful 
materialism, — but with the fault, of course, 
that it has no depth, no reserved force whereon 
to fall back when a reverse comes. 

That repose which is the ornament and ripe- 
ness of man is not American. That repose which 



532 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

indicates a faith in the laws of the universe, — - a 
faith that they will fulfil themselves, and are not 
to be impeded, transgressed or accelerated. Our 
people are too slight and vain. They are easily 
elated and easily depressed. See how fast they 
extend the fleeting fabric of their trade, — not at 
all considering the remote reaction and bank- 
ruptcy, but with the same abandonment to the 
moment and the facts of the hour as the Esqui- 
mau who sells his bed in the morning. Our 
people act on the moment, and from external 
impulse. They all lean on some other, and this 
superstitiously, and not from insight of his merit. 
They follow a fact ; they follow success, and not 
skill. Therefore, as soon as the success stops 
and the admirable man blunders, they quit him ; 
already they remember that they long ago sus- 
pected his judgment, and they transfer the re- 
pute of judgment to the next prosperous person 
who has not yet blundered. Of course this levity 
makes them as easily despond. It seems as if 
history gave no account of any society in which 
despondency came so readily to heart as we see 
it and feel it in ours. Young men at thirty and 
even earlier lose all spring and vivacity, and if 
they fail in their first enterprise throw up the 
game. 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 533 

The source of mischief is the extreme diffi- 
culty with which men are roused from the torpor 
of every day. Blessed is all that agitates the mass, 
breaks up this torpor, and begins motion. Cor- 
pora non agunt nisi soluta ; the chemical rule is 
true in mind. Contrast, change, interruption, 
are necessary to new activity and new combina- 
tions. 

If a temperate wise man should look over our 
American society, I think the first danger that 
would excite his alarm would be the European 
influences on this country. We buy much of 
Europe that does not make us better men ; and 
mainly the expensiveness which is ruining that 
country. We import trifles, dancers, singers, 
laces, books of patterns, modes, gloves and 
cologne, manuals of Gothic architecture, steam- 
made ornaments. America is provincial. It is 
an immense Halifax. See the secondariness and 
aping of foreign and English life, that runs 
through this country, in building, in dress, in 
eating, in books. Every village, every city, has 
its architecture, its costume, its hotel, its private 
house, its church, from England. 

Our politics threaten her. Her manners 
threaten us. Life is grown and growing so costly 
that it threatens to kill us. A man is coming. 



534 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

here as there, to value himself on what he can 
buy. Worst of all, his expense is not his own, 
but a far-off copy of Osborne House or the 
Elysee. The tendency of this is to make all 
men alike; to extinguish individualism and 
choke up all the channels of inspiration from 
God in man. We lose our invention and de- 
scend into imitation. A man no longer con- 
ducts his own life. It is manufactured for him. 
The tailor makes your dress ; the baker your 
bread ; the upholsterer, from an imported book 
of patterns, your furniture ; the Bishop of 
London your faith. 

In the planters of this country, in the seven- 
teenth century, the conditions of the country, 
combined with the impatience of arbitrary power 
which they brought from England, forced them 
to a wonderful personal independence and to a 
certain heroic planting and trading. Later this 
strength appeared in the solitudes of the West, 
where a man is made a hero by the varied emer- 
gencies of his lonely farm, and neighborhoods 
must combine against the Indians, or the horse- 
thieves, or the river rowdies, by organizing them- 
selves into committees of vigilance. Thus the 
land and sea educate the people, and bring out 
presence of mind, self-reliance, and hundred- 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 535 

handed activity. These are the people for an 
emergency. They are not to be surprised, and 
can find a way out of any peril. This rough and 
ready force becomes them, and makes them fit 
citizens and civilizers. But if we found them 
clinging to English traditions, which are graceful 
enough at home, as the English Church, and 
entailed estates, and distrust of popular election, 
we should feel this reactionary, and absurdly out 
of place. 

Let the passion for America cast out the 
passion for Europe. Here let there be what the 
earth waits for, — exalted manhood. What this 
country longs for is personalities, grand persons, 
to counteract its materialities. For it is the rule 
of the universe that corn shall serve man, and 
not man corn. 

They who find America insipid — they for 
whom London and Paris have spoiled their own 
homes — can be spared to return to those cities. 
I not only see a career at home for more genius 
than we have, but for more than there is in the 
world. 

The class of which I speak make themselves 

merry without duties. They sit in decorated 

club-houses in the cities, and burn tobacco and 

I play whist ; in the country they sit idle in stores 



536 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

and bar-rooms, and burn tobacco, and gossip 
and sleep. They complain of the flatness of 
American life ; " America has no illusions, no 
romance." They have no perception of its 
destiny. They are not Americans. 

The felon is the logical extreme of the epicure 
and coxcomb. Selfish luxury is the end of both, 
though in one it is decorated with refinements, 
and in the other brutal. But my point now is, 
that this spirit is not American. 

Our young men lack idealism. A man for suc- 
cess must not be pure idealist, then he will prac- 
tically fail ; but he must have ideas, must obey 
ideas, or he might as well be the horse he rides 
on. A man does not want to be sun-dazzled, 
sun-blind ; but every man must have glimmer 
enough to keep him from knocking his head 
against the walls. And it is in the interest of 
civilization and good society and friendship, that 
I dread to hear of well-born, gifted and amiable 
men, that they have this indiflTerence, disposing 
them to this despair. 

Of no use are the men who study to do exactly 
as was done before, who can never understand 
that to-day is a new day. There never was such 
a combination as this of ours, and the rules to 
meet it are not set down in any history. We 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 537 

want men of original perception and original 
action, who can open their eyes wider than to 
a nationality, — namely, to considerations of 
benefit to the human race, — can act in the 
interest of civilization ; men of elastic, men of 
moral mind, who can live in the moment and 
take a step forward. Columbus was no back- 
ward-creeping crab, nor was Martin Luther, nor 
John Adams, nor Patrick Henry, nor Thomas 
Jefferson ; and the Genius or Destiny of Amer- 
ica is no log or sluggard, but a man incessantly 
advancing, as the shadow on the diaFs face, or 
the heavenly body by whose light it is marked. 

The flowering of civilization is the finished 
man, the man of sense, of grace, of accomplish- 
ment, of social power, — the gentleman. What 
hinders that he be born here ? The new times 
need a new man, the complemental man, whom 
plainly this country must furnish. Freer swing 
his arms ; farther pierce his eyes ; more forward 
and forthright his whole build and rig than the 
Englishman's, who, we see, is much imprisoned 
in his backbone. 

'T is certain that our civilization is yet in- 
complete, it has not ended nor given sign of 
ending in a hero. 'T is a wild democracy ; the 
riot of mediocrities and dishonesties and fudges. 



538 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

Ours is the age of the omnibus, of the third 
person plural, of Tammany Hall. Is it that 
Nature has only so much vital force, and must 
dilute it if it is to be multiplied into millions ? 
The beautiful is never plentiful. Then Illinois 
and Indiana, with their spawning loins, must 
needs be ordinary. 

It is not a question whether we shall be a 
multitude of people. No, that has been con- 
spicuously decided already ; but whether we 
shall be the new nation, the guide and lawgiver 
of all nations, as having clearly chosen and 
firmly held the simplest and best rule of po- 
litical society. 

Now, if the spirit which years ago armed 
this country against rebellion, and put forth 
such gigantic energy in the charity of the San- 
itary Commission, could be waked to the con- 
serving and creating duty of making the laws 
just and humane, it were to enroll a great con- 
stituency of religious, self-respecting, brave, 
tender, faithful obeyers of duty, lovers of men, 
filled with loyalty to each other, and with the 
simple and sublime purpose of carrying out in 
private and in public action the desire and need 
of mankind. 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 539 

Here is the post where the patriot should 
plant himself; here the altar where virtuous 
young men, those to whom friendship is the 
dearest covenant, should bind each other to 
loyalty ; where . genius should kindle its fires 
and bring forgotten truth to the eyes of men. 

It is not possible to extricate yourself from 
the questions in which your age is involved. 
Let the good citizen perform the duties put on 
him here and now. It is not by heads reverted 
to the dying Demosthenes, or to Luther, or to 
Wallace, or to George Fox, or to George 
Washington, that you can combat the dangers 
and dragons that beset the United States at 
this time. I believe this cannot be accomplished 
by dunces or idlers, but requires docility, sym- 
pathy, and religious receiving from higher prin- 
ciples ; for liberty, like religion, is a short and 
hasty fruit, and like all power subsists only by 
new rallyings on the source of inspiration. 

Power can be generous. The very grandeur 
of the means which offer themselves to us 
should suggest grandeur in the direction of our 
expenditure. If our mechanic arts are unsur- 
passed in usefulness, if we have taught the river 
to make shoes and nails and carpets, and the 
bolt of heaven to write our letters like a Gillot 



540 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

pen, let these wonders work for honest hu- 
manity, for the poor, for justice, genius and the 
public good/ Let us realize that this country, 
the last found, is the great charity of God to the 
human race. 

America should affirm and establish that in 
no instance shall the guns go in advance of the 
present right. We shall not make coups d^Uat 
and afterwards explain and pay, but shall pro- 
ceed like William Penn, or whatever other 
Christian or humane person who treats with 
the Indian or the foreigner, on principles of 
honest trade and mutual advantage. We can 
see that the Constitution and the law in America 
must be written on ethical principles, so that 
the entire power of the spiritual world shall 
hold the citizen loyal, and repel the enemy as 
by force of nature. It should be mankind^s bill 
of rights, or Royal Proclamation of the Intellect 
ascending the throne, announcing its good 
pleasure that now, once for all, the world shall 
be governed by common sense and law of 
morals. 

The end of all political struggle is to establish 
morality as the basis of all legislation. *T is not 
free institutions, 'tis not a democracy that is 
the end, — no, but only the means. Morality 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 541 

is the object of government. We want a state 
of things in which crime will not pay ; a state 
of things which allows every man the largest 
liberty compatible with the liberty of every 
other man. 

Humanity asks that government shall not 
be ashamed to be tender and paternal, but that 
democratic institutions shall be more thought- 
ful for the interests of women, for the training 
of children, and for the welfare of sick and un- 
able persons, and serious care of criminals, than 
was ever any the best government of the Old 
World. 

The genius of the country has marked out 
our true policy, — opportunity. Opportunity 
of civil rights, of education, of personal power, 
and not less of wealth ; doors wide open. If 
I could have it, — free trade with all the world 
without toll or custom-houses, invitation as we 
now make to every nation, to every race and 
skin, white men, red men, yellow men, black 
men ; hospitality of fair field and equal laws to 
all.^ Let them compete, and success to the 
strongest, the wisest and the best. The land 
is wide enough, the soil has bread for all. 

I hope America will come to have its pride 
in being a nation of servants, and not of the 



542 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

served. How can men have any other ambition 
where the reason has not suffered a disastrous 
ecHpse ? Whilst every man can say I serve, — 
to the whole extent of my being I apply my 
faculty to the service of mankind in my especial 
place, — he therein sees and shows a reason for 
his being in the world, and is not a moth or 
incumbrance in it. 

The distinction and end of a soundly consti- 
tuted man is his labor. Use is inscribed on all 
his faculties. Use is the end to which he exists. 
As the tree exists for its fruit, so a man for his 
work. A fruitless plant, an idle animal, does 
not stand in the universe. They are all toiling, 
however secretly or slowly, in the province 
assigned them, and to a use in the economy of 
the world ; the higher and more complex organ- 
izations to higher and more catholic service. 
And man seems to play, by his instincts and 
activity, a certain part that even tells on the 
general face of the planet, drains swamps, leads 
rivers into dry countries for their irrigation, 
perforates forests and stony mountain chains 
with roads, hinders the inroads of the sea on 
the continent, as if dressing the globe for hap- 
pier races. 

On the whole, I know that the cosmic results 



I 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 543 

will be the same, whatever the daily events may 
be. Happily we are under better guidance than 
of statesmen. Pennsylvania coal-mines and New 
York shipping and free labor, though not ideal- 
ists, gravitate in the ideal direction. Nothing 
less large than justice can keep them in good 
temper. Justice satisfies everybody, and justice 
alone. No monopoly must be foisted in, no 
weak party or nationality sacrificed, no cow- 
ard compromise conceded to a strong partner. 
Every one of these is the seed of vice, war and 
national disorganization. It is our part to carry 
out to the last the ends of liberty and justice. 
We shall stand, then, for vast interests ; north 
and south, east and west will be present to our 
minds, and our vote will be as if they voted, 
and we shall know that our vote secures the 
foundations of the state, good will, liberty 
and security of traffic and of production, and 
mutual increase of good will in the great 
interests. 

Our helm is given up to a better guidance 
than our own ; the course of events is quite too 
strong for any helmsman, and our little wherry 
is taken in tow by the ship of the great Admi- 
ral which knows the way, and has the force to 
draw men and states and planets to their good. 



544 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

Such and so potent is this high method by 
which the Divine Providence sends the chiefest 
benefits under the mask of calamities, that I do 
not think we shall by any perverse ingenuity 
prevent the blessing. 

In seeing this guidance of events, in seeing 
this felicity without example that has rested on 
the Union thus far, I find new confidence for 
the future. 

I could heartily wish that our will and en- 
deavor were more active parties to the work. 
But I see in all directions the light breaking. 
Trade and government will not alone be the 
favored aims of mankind, but every useful, 
every elegant art, every exercise of the imagin- 
ation, the height of reason, the noblest affection, 
the purest religion will find their home in our 
institutions, and write our laws for the benefit 
of men.' 



NOTES 



NOTES 

THE LORD'S SUPPER 

MR. EMERSON did not wish to have his sermons pub- 
lished. All that was worth saving in them, he said, 
would be found in the Essays. Yet it seemed best, to Mr. 
Cabot and to Mr. Emerson's family, that this one sermon 
should be preserved. A record of a turning-point in his life, it 
showed at once his thought and his character; for he not only 
gives the reasons why he believes the rite not authoritatively 
enjoined, and hence recommends its modification or discontin- 
uance, but with serenity and sweetness renders back his trust 
into his people's hands, since he cannot see his way longer to 
exercise it as most of them desire. 

In the month of June, 1832, Mr. Emerson had proposed to 
the church, apparently with hope of their approval, that the 
Communion be observed only as a festival of commemoration, 
without the use of the elements. The committee to whom 
the proposal was referred made a report expressing confidence 
in him, but declining to advise the change, as the matter was 
one which they could not properly be called upon to decide. 

The question then came back to the pastor, whether he 
was willing to remain in his place and administer the rite in 
the usual form. 

He went alone to the White Mountains, then seldom vis- 
ited, to consider the grave question whether he was prepared, 
rather than to continue the performance of a part of his priestly 
office from which his instincts and beliefs recoiled, to sacrifice 
a position of advantage for usefulness to his people to whom he 
was bound by many ties, and in preparation for which he had 



548 * NOTES 

spent long years. He wrote, at Conway, New Hampshire: 
** Here among the mountains the pinions of thought should 
be strong, and one should see the errors of men from a calmer 
height of love and wisdom. * ' His diary at Ethan Allan Craw- 
ford' s contains his doubts and questionings, which Mr. Cabot 
has given in his Memoir. Yet there was but one answer for 
him, and after a fortnight, he came back clear in his mind to 
give his decision, embodied in this sermon, to his people. On 
the same day that it was preached, he formally resigned his 
pastorate. The church was loth to part with him. It was hoped 
that some other arrangement might be made. Mr. Cabot 
learned that ** several meetings were held and the proprietors 
of pews were called in, as having ' an undoubted right to retain 
Mr. Emerson as their pastor, without reference to the opposi- 
tion of the church.' At length, after two adjournments and 
much discussion, it was decided by thirty votes against twenty- 
four to accept his resignation. It was voted at the same time 
to continue his salary for the present. ' ' 

Thus Mr. Emerson and his people parted in all kindness, 
but, as Mr. Cabot truly said, their difference of views on this 
rite **was in truth only the symptom of a deeper diiFerence 
which would in any case sooner or later have made it impossible 
for him to retain his office; a disagreement not so much about 
particular doctrines or observances as about their sanction, the 
authority on which all doctrines and observances rest." 

In the farewell letter which Mr. Emerson wrote to the 
people of his church, he said: — 

** I rejoice to believe that my ceasing to exercise the pas- 
toral office among you does not make any real change in our 
spiritual relation to each other. Whatever is most desirable 
and excellent therein remains to us. For, truly speaking, who- 
ever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a 



NOTES 549 

pledge of his fidelity to virtue, — he has come under bonds to 
adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached. And 
so I say to all you who have been my counsellors and coop- 
erators in our Christian walk, that I am wont to see in your 
faces the seals and certificates of our mutual obligations. If we 
have conspired fi-om week to week in the sympathy and ex- 
pression of devout sentiments; if we have received together the 
unspeakable gift of God's truth; if we have studied together 
the sense of any divine word; or striven together in any char- 
ity; or conferred together for the relief or instruction of any 
brother; if together we have laid down the dead in a pious 
hope; or held up the babe into the baptism of Christianity; 
above all, if we have shared in any habitual acknowledgment 
of the benignant God, whose omnipresence raises and glorifies 
the meanest offices and the lowest ability, and opens heaven 
in every heart that worships him, — then indeed we are united, 
we are mutually debtors to each other of faith and hope, en- 
gaged to persist and confirm each other's hearts in obedience to 
the Gospel. We shall not feel that the nominal changes and 
little separations of this world can release us from the strong 
cordage of this spiritual bond. And I entreat you to consider 
how truly blessed will have been our connection if, in this 
manner, the memory of it shall serve to bind each one of us 
more strictly to the practice of our several duties." 

Page i8, note i. The doctrine of the offices of Jesus, even 
in the Unitarianism of Dr. Channing, was never congenial to 
Mr. Emerson's mind. He notes the same with regard to his 
father, and even to his Aunt Mary, in spite of her Calvinism. 
Any interposed personality between the Creator and the cre- 
ated was repugnant to him. Even in March, 1831, he is 
considering in his journal that his hearers will say, '* To what 



550 NOTES 

purpose is this attempt to explain away so safe and holy a doc- 
trine as that of the Holy Spirit ? Why unsettle or disturb a 
faith which presents to many minds a helpful medium by which 
they approach the idea of God ? " and he answers, **And 
this question I will meet. It is because I think the popular 
views of this principle are pernicious, because it does put a 
medium, because it removes the idea of God from the mind. 
It leaves some events, some things, some thoughts, out of the 
power of Him who causes every event, every flower, every 
thought. The tremendous idea, as I may well call it, of God 
is screened from the soul. . . . And least of all can we 
beheve — Reason will not let us — that the presiding Creator 
commands all matter and never descends into the secret 
chambers of the Soul. There he is most present. The Soul 
rules over matter. Matter may pass away like a mote in the 
sunbeam, may be absorbed into the immensity of God, as a 
mist is absorbed into the heat of the Sun — but the soul is the 
kingdom of God, the abode of love, of truth, of virtue." 

Page iQy note i. In the hope of satisfying those of his 
people who held to the letter of the Scriptural Law, Mr. 
Emerson made the foregoing clear statement with regard to 
the authority for the rite, from the professional point of 
view. It seems quite unlike his usual method, and there is 
little doubt that in it appears the influence of his elder 
brother, William, whose honest doubts had led him to abandon 
even earlier the profession of his fathers. In the introductory 
note to the chapter on Goethe, in Representative Men, is 
given an account of his unsuccessful pilgrimage to Weimar, in 
hopes that the great mind of Germany could solve these 
doubts. There is a letter still preserved, written by William, 
soon after his return, to his venerable kinsman at Concord, 
Dr. Ripley, in which he explains with great clearness his 



NOTES 551 

own reasons for not believing that the Communion rite was 
enjoined by Jesus for perpetual observance. The argument on 
scriptural grounds there clearly stated is substantially the same 
as that which his younger brother makes use of in the begin- 
ning of this sermon. Thus far he has spoken of outward 
authority; from this point onward he speaks from within — the 
way native to him. 

Page 25 y note i. Mr. Emerson left the struggles of the Past 
behind, and did not care to recall them. Thus, writing of 
Lucretia Mott, whom he met when giving a course of lectures 
in Philadelphia, in January, 1843, he said: — 

** Me she taxed with living out of the world, and I was not 
much flattered that her interest in me respected my rejection 
of an ordinance, sometime, somewhere. Also yesterday — for 
Philadelphian ideas, like love, do creep where they cannot go — 
I was challenged on the subject of the Lord's Supper, and with 
great slowness and pain was forced to recollect the grounds 
of my dissent in that particular. You may be sure I was very 
tardy with my texts." 

Mr. Emerson's journal during the period of trial and deci- 
sion, in the mountains, shows that he was reading with great 
interest the life of George Fox. The simplicity of the Soci- 
ety of Friends, their aversion to forms and trust in the inward 
light, always appealed to him. 

In his essay on The Preacher he says: — 

** The supposed embarrassments to young clergymen exist 
only to feeble wills. . . . That gray deacon, or respectable 
matron with Calvinistic antecedents, you can readily see, 
would not have presented any obstacle to the march of St. 
Bernard or of George Fox, of Luther or of Theodore Parker. ' * 
This hints at the help he had found in the Quaker's history in 
his time of need. 



552 NOTES 



HISTORICAL DISCOURSE AT CONCORD 

Mr. Emerson's Discourse was printed soon after its delivery, 
and with it, in an Appendix, the following notice of the cele- 
bration of the second centennial anniversary of the incorpora- 
tion of the town, sent to him by ** a friend who thought it 
desirable to preserve the remembrance of some particulars of 
this historical festival.** 

**At a meeting of the town of Concord, in April last, it 
was voted to celebrate the Second Centennial Anniversary of 
the settlement of the town, on the 1 2*^ September following. 
A committee of fifteen were chosen to make the arrangements. 
This committee appointed Ralph Waldo Emerson, Orator, 
and Rev. Dr. Ripley and Rev. Mr. Wilder, Chaplains of the 
Day. Hon. John Keyes was chosen President of the Day. 

** On the morning of the 12^^ September, at half past 10 
o'clock, the children of the town, to the number of about 
500, moved in procession to the Common in front of the old 
church and court-house and there opened to the right and 
left, awaiting the procession of citizens. At 1 1 o'clock, the 
Concord Light Infantry, under Captain Moore, and the Artil- 
lery under Captain Buttrick, escorted the civic procession, 
under the direction of Moses Prichard as Chief Marshal, from 
Shepherd' s hotel through the lines of children to the Meeting- 
house. The South gallery had been reserved for ladies, and the 
North gallery for the children; but (it was a good omen) the 
children overran the space assigned for their accommodation, 
and were sprinkled throughout the house, and ranged on seats 
along the aisles. The old Meeting-house, which was propped 
to sustain the unwonted weight of the multitude within its 
walls, was built in 1712, thus having stood for more than 



NOTES 553 

half the period to which our history goes back. Prayers were 
offered and the Scriptures read by the aged minister of the 
town. Rev. Ezra Ripley, now in the 85^^ year of his age; 
— another interesting feature in this scene of reminiscences. 
A very pleasant and impressive part of the services in the 
church was the singing of the 107^** psalm, from the New 
England version of the psalms made by Eliot, Mather, and 
others, in 1639, and used in the church in this town in the 
days of Peter Bulkeley. The psalm was read a line at a time, 
after the ancient fashion, from the Deacons' seat, and so sung to 
the tune of St. Martin's by the whole congregation standing. 

** Ten of the surviving veterans who were in arms at the 
Bridge, on the 19^^ April, 1775, honored the festival with 
their presence. Their names are Abel Davis, Thaddeus Blood, 
Tilly Buttrick, John Hosmer, of Concord ; Thomas Thorp, 
Solomon Smith, John Oliver, Aaron Jones, of Acton ; David 
Lane, of Bedford ; Amos Baker, of Lincoln. 

** On leaving the church, the procession again formed, and 
moved to a large tent nearly opposite Shepherd's hotel, under 
which dinner was prepared, and the company sat down to 
the tables, to the number of four hundred. We were honored 
vdth the presence of distinguished guests, among whom were 
Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong, Judge Davis, Alden Bradford 
(descended from the 2^ governor of Plymouth Colony), Hon. 
Edward Everett, Hon. Stephen C. Phillips of Salem, Philip 
Hone, Esq., of New York, General Dearborn, and Lieutenant- 
Colonel R. C. Winthrop (descended from the ist governor 
of Massachusetts). Letters were read from several gentlemen 
expressing their regret at being deprived of the pleasure of 
being present on the occasion. The character of the speeches 
and sentiments at the dinner were manly and affectionate, in 
keeping with the whole temper of the day. 



554 NOTES 

<* On leaving the dinner-table, the invited guests, with 
many of the citizens, repaired to the court-house to pay their 
respects to the ladies of Concord, who had there, with their 
friends, partaken of an elegant collation, and now politely 
offered coffee to the gentlemen. The hall, in which the col- 
lation was spread, had been decorated by fair hands with fes- 
toons of flowers, and wreaths of evergreen, and hung with 
pictures of the Fathers of the Town. Crowded as it was with 
graceful forms and happy faces, and resounding with the hum 
of animated conversation, it was itself a beautiful living picture. 
Compared with the poverty and savageness of the scene which 
the same spot presented two hundred years ago, it was a bril- 
liant reverse of the medal; and could scarcely fail, like all the 
parts of the holiday, to lead the reflecting mind to thoughts of 
that Divine Providence, which, in every generation, has been 
our tower of defence and horn of blessing. 

"At sunset the company separated and retired to their 
homes; and the evening of this day of excitement was as quiet 
as a Sabbath throughout the village.'* 

Within the year, Mr. Emerson had come to make his 
home for life in the ancestral town, and had become a house- 
holder. Two days after the festival, he drove to Plymouth in 
a chaise, and was there married to Lidian Jackson, and imme- 
diately brought his bride to her Concord home. 

His aged step-grandfather was the senior chaplain at the 
Celebration, and his brother Charles, who was to live with him 
in the new home, was one of the marshals. 

In preparation for this address Mr. Emerson made diligent 
examination of the old town records, and spent a fortnight in 
Cambridge consulting the works on early New England in 
the College Library. I reproduce most of his references to his 



NOTES 555 

authorities exactly, although there are, no doubt, newer edi- 
tions of some of the works. 



Page jOy note I. This story is from Bede's Ecclesiastical 
History (chapter xiii., Bohn's Antiquarian Library'). Mr, 
Emerson used it in full as the exordium of his essay on Im- 
mortality, in Letters and Social Aims. 

Page JO, note 2. The poem *« Hamatreya,** wherein 
appear the names of many of these first settlers, might well be 
read in coimection with the opening passages of this address. 

Mr. Emerson's right of descent to speak as representa- 
tive of Peter Bulkeley, who was the spiritual arm of the settle- 
ment, as Simon Willard was its sword-arm, may here be 
shown : Rev. Joseph Emerson of Mendon (son of Thomas 
of Ipswich, the first of the name in this country) married 
Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Edward Bulkeley, who succeeded 
his father, the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, as minister of Concord. 
Edward, the son of Joseph of Mendon and Elizabeth Bulke- 
ley, was father of Rev. Joseph Emerson of Maiden, who 
was father of Rev. William Emerson of Concord, who was 
father of Rev. William Emerson of Harvard and Boston, the 
father of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Page jiy note i. Neal's History of New England, vol. i., 
p. 132. 

Page Ji, note 2. Neal, vol. i., p. 321. 

Page ji, note J. Shattuck's History of Concord, p. 158. 

Page 32, note I. On September 2, 1635, the General 
Court passed this order: — 

**It is ordered that there shalbe a plantacon att Muskete- 
quid & that there shalbe 6 myles of land square to belong to 
it, & that the inhabitants thereof shall have three yeares iihuni- 
ties from all publ[ic] charges except traineings; Further, that 



556 NOTES 

when any that plant there shall have occacon of carryeing of 
goods thither, they shall repaire to two of the nexte magistrates 
where the teames are, whoe shall have the power for a yeare 
to presse draughts, att reasonable rates, to be payed by the 
owners of the goods, to transport their goods thither att sea- 
sonable tymes: & the name of the place is changed & here 
after to be called Concord." 

Page 32 f note 2. Shattuck, p. 5. 

Page jj, note i. In his lecture on Boston (published in 
the volume Natural History of Intellect') Mr. Emerson gives an 
amusing enumeration of some troubles which seemed so great 
to the newcomers from the Old World: he mentions their 
fear of lions, the accident to John Smith from ** the most poi- 
sonous tail of a fish called a sting-ray," the circumstance of 
the overpowering effect of the sweet fern upon the Concord 
party, and the intoxicating effect of wild grapes eaten by the 
Norse explorers, and adds: ''Nature has never again in- 
dulged in these exasperations. It seems to have been the last 
outrage ever committed by the sting-rays, or by the sweet fern, 
or by the fox-grapes. They have been of peaceable behavior 
ever since." 

Page 34t note I. Johnson's Wonder- Working Providence, 
chap. XXXV. Mr. Emerson abridged and slightly altered some 
sentences. 

Page 3^ y note I. Mourt, Beginning of Plymouth, 1621, 
p. 60. 

Page 3^, note 2. Johnson, p. 56. Josselyn,in his New Eng- 
land's Rarities Discovered, speaks with respect of** Squashes, 
but more truly squontersquashes; a kind of mellon, or rather 
gourd; . . . some of these are green; some yellow; some 
longish like a gourd; others round, like an apple: all of them 
pleasant food, boyled and buttered, and seasoned with spice. 



NOTES 557 

But the yellow squash — called an apple-squash (because like 
an apple) and about the bigness of a pome- water is the best 
kind." Wood, in his New England Prospect ^ says: "In 
summer, when their corn is spent, isquotersquashes is their 
best bread, a fruit much like a pumpion.'* 

Page j6, note i, Nashawtuck, a small and shapely hill 
between the Musketaquid and the Assabet streams, at their 
point of union, was a pleasant and convenient headquarters for 
a sagamore of a race whose best roadway for travel and trans- 
portation was a deep, quiet stream, the fish of which they ate, 
and also used for manure for their cornfields along the bluffs. 
Indian graves have been found on this hill. 

Page j6y note 2, Josselyn's Voyages to New England ^ 
1638. 

Page j6y note j. Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, 
vol. i., chap. 6. 

Page j6y note 4. Thomas Morton, New England Canaan, 
p. 47. 

Page J7, note i, Shattuck, p. 6. 

The old Middlesex Hotel, which stood during the greater 
part of the nineteenth century on the southwest side of the 
Common, opposite the court- and town-houses, had fallen into 
decay in 1 900, and was bought and taken down by the town 
as an improvement to the public square to commemorate the 
one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of Concord Fight. 
It is probable that Jethro's Oak, under which the treaty was 
made, stood a little nearer the house of Rev. Peter Bulkeley, 
the site of which, about one hundred paces distant on the 
Lowell road, is now marked by a stone and bronze tablet. 

Page j8, note i. Depositions taken in 1684, and copied 
in the first volume of the Town Records. 

Page jg, note i. Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence, 



558 NOTES 

Page jp, note 2, New England"* s Plantation. 

Page s^y note 3. E. W.'s Letter in Mourt, 1621. 

Page 40, note i, Peter Bulkeley's Gospel Covenant; 
preached at Concord in New England. 2d edition, London, 
1651, p. 432. 

Page 41 y note z. See petition in Shattuck's His tor j, p. 14. 

Page 41, note 2. Shattuck, p. 14. This was the meadow 
and upland on the Lowell road, one mile north of Concord, 
just beyond the river. On the farm stands the unpainted 
* ' lean-to ' * house, now owned by the daughters of the late 
Edmund Hosmer. 

Page 42y note i. Concord Town Records. 

Page 4Jy note i. Bancroft, History of the United States, 
vol. i., p. 389. 

Page 44, note i. Savage's Winthrop, vol. i., p. 114. 

Page 44, note 2, Colony Records, vol. i. 

Page 44, note J. See Hutchinson's Collection, p. 287. 

Page 46, note i, Winthrop's Journal, vol. i., pp. 128, 
129, and the editor's note. 

Page 46, note 2. Winthrop's Journal, vol. ii., p. 160. 

Page 48, note j. Town Records. 

With the exception of the anecdotes in this and the follow- 
ing sentence, almost the whole of this account of the theory 
and practice of the New England town-meeting was used by 
Mr. Emerson in his oration, given in December, 1870, be- 
fore the New England Society in New York. The greater part 
of the matter used in that address is included in the lecture on 
Boston, in the volume Natural History of Intellect. 

The New England Society of New York recently published 
the Orations delivered before it previous to 1871, including 
Mr. Emerson's, as far as it could be recovered from the scat- 
tered manuscript, and the newspaper reports of the time. 



NOTES 559 

Page _^0, note I. Hutchinson's Collection, p. 27. 

Page 57-, note i. Shattuck, p. 20. '* The Government, 
1 3 Nov. , 1 644, ordered the county courts to take care of the 
Indians residing within their several shires, to have them 
civilized, and to take order, from time to time, to have them 
instructed in the knowledge of God. ' ' 

Page ^2, note i. Shepard's Clear Sunshine of the Gospel, 
London, 1648. 

Page ^2, note 2. These rules are given in Shattuck' s His- 
tory, pp. 22-24, and were called '* Conclusions and orders 
made and agreed upon by divers Sachems and other principal 
men amongst the Indians at Concord in the end of the eleventh 
Month (called January) An. 1646." 

The following are interesting specimens of these: — 

Rule 2 . "That there shall be no more Powwawing amongst 
the Indians. And if any shall hereafter powwaw, both he 
that shall powwaw, and he that shall procure him to powwaw, 
shall pay twenty shillings apiece." 

Rule 4. ** They desire they may understand the wiles of 
Satan, and grow out of love with his suggestions and temta- 
tions." 

Rule 5. ** That they may fall upon some better course to 
improve their time than formerly." 

Rule 15. "They will wear their haire comely, as the 
English do, and whosoever shall oiFend herein shall pay four 
shillings." 

Rule 23. "They shall not disguise themselves in their 
mournings as formerly, nor shall they keep a great noyse by 
howling," 

Rule 24. " The old ceremony of a maide walking alone 
and living apart so many days, [fine] twenty shillings." 

Page ^j, note i, Shepard, p. 9. 

I 



56o NOTES 

Page ^4, note i. Wilson's Letter, 1651. 

Page ^4^ note 2. News from America y p. 22. 

Page ^4y note J. Winthrop, vol. ii., p. 2. 

Page ^^y note i. Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 90. 

Page ^^y note 2. Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 112. 

Page ^^y note J. Winthrop, vol. ii., p. 21. 

Page ^^y note 4, Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 94. 

Page ^^y note ^, Bulkeley's Gospel Covenant y p. 209. 

Page ^^y note 6. Winthrop, vol. ii., p. 94. 

Page ^6, note i. Gospel Covenant y p. 301. 

Page ^^y note i, Shattuck, p. 45. 

Page ^Yy note 2, Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 172. 

Page 57, note j. See his instructions from the Commis- 
sioners, his narrative, and the Commissioners' letter to him, 
in Hutchinson's Collectiony pp. 261-270. 

Page ^8 y note i, Hutchinson's History y vol. i., p. 254. 

Page ^8 y note 2, Hubbard's Indian Wars, p. 119, ed. 
1801. 

Mr. Charles H. Walcott, in his Concord in the Colonial 
Period (Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 1884), gives a very inter- 
esting account of the Brookfield fight. 

Page ^8, note J. Hubbard, p. 201. 

Page ^^y note I. Hubbard, p. 185. 

Page ^^y note 2. Hubbard, p. 245. 

Page 60y note i. Shattuck, p. 55. 

Page 60 y note 2. Hubbard, p. 260. 

Page 61 3 note i. Neal's History of New England y vol. i., 
p. 321. 

Page 61 i note 2. Mather, Magna lia Christiy vol. i., p. 

363. 

Page 61 y note J. ** Tradition has handed down the follow- 
ing anecdote. A consultation among the Indian chiefs took 



NOTES 561 

place about this time on the high lands in Stow, and, as they 
cast their eyes towards Sudbury and Concord, a question 
arose which they should attack first. The decision was made 
to attack the former. One of the principal chiefs said: * We 
no prosper if we go to Concord — the Great Spirit love that 
people — the evil spirit tell us not to go — they have a great 
man there — he great pray, * The Rev. Edward Bulkeley 
was then minister of the town, and his name and distinguished 
character were known even to the red men of the forest. ' ' — 
Shattuck's History y p. 59, note. 

Page 61 y note 4.. On this occasion the name of Hoar, 
since honored in Concord through several generations, came 
to the front. John Hoar, the first practitioner of law in Con- 
cord, an outspoken man of sturdy independence, who, for 
uttering complaints that justice was denied him in the courts, 
had been made to give bonds for good behavior and *< dis- 
abled to plead any cases but his oune in this jurisdiction,*' 
who had been fined ^10 for saying that " the Blessing which 
his Master Bulkeley pronounced in dismissing the publique 
Assembly was no more than vane babling," and was twice 
fined for non-attendance at public worship, proved to be the 
only man in town who was willing to take charge of the 
Praiying Indians of Nashobah, whom the General Court 
ordered moved to Concord during Philip's War. The magis- 
trates who had persecuted him had to turn to him, and he 
made good provision on his own place for the comfort and 
safe-keeping of these unfortunates, and their employment, when 
public opinion was directed against them with the cruelty of 
fear. Soon, however. Captain Mosley, who had been secretly 
sent for by some citizens, came with soldiers into the meeting- 
house, announced to the congregation that he had heard that 
<* there were some heathen in town committed to one Hoar, 

XI 



562 NOTES 

who, he was informed, were a trouble and disquiet to them;" 
therefore, if the people desired it, he would remove them to 
Boston. No one made objection, so he went to Mr. Hoar's 
house, counted the Indians and set a guard. Hoar vigorously 
protesting. He came next day; Hoar bravely refused to give 
them up, so Mosley removed them by violence and carried 
the Indians to Deer Island, where they suffered much during 
the winter. See Walcott*s Concord in .the Colonial Period. 

Page 62 y note i. Sprague's Centennial Ode. 

Page 62t note 2. Shattuck, chap. iii. Walcott, chap. iii. 

Page 63, note i. Hutchinson's Collection, p. 484. 

Page 6j, note 2. Hutchinson's Collection , pp. 543, 548, 
557, 566. 

Page 6jy note 3. Hutchinson's History, vol. i., p. 336. 

The month of April has been fateful for Concord, espe- 
cially its nineteenth day. On that day the military company 
under Lieutenant Heald marched to Boston to take part in the 
uprising of the freemen of the colony against Andros. On that 
same day, in 1775, the minute-men and militia of Concord, 
promptly reinforced by the soldiers of her daughter and sister 
towns, marched down to the guarded North Bridge and 
returned the fire of the Royal troops in the opening battle 
of the Revolution. Again on the nineteenth of April, 1 8,6 1 , 
the ** Concord Artillery " (so-called, although then a company 
of the Fifth Infantry, M. V. M. ) left the village for the front in 
the War of the RebelHon; and yet again in the last days of 
April, 1898, the same company, then, as now, attached to 
the Sixth Regiment, M. V. M., marched from the village 
green to bear its part in the Spanish War. 

Page 64, note i. Town Records. 

Page 64, note 2. The following minutes from the Town 
Records in 1692 may serve as an example: — 



NOTES 563 

'*John Craggin, aged about 63 years, and Sarah his wife, 
aet. about 63 years, do both testify upon oath that about 2 
years ago John Shepard, sen. of Concord, came to our house 
in Obourne, to treat with us, and give us a visit, and carried 
the said Sary Craggin to Concord with him, and there dis- 
coursed us in order to a marriage between his son, John Shep- 
ard, jun. and our daughter, Eliz. Craggin, and, for our incour- 
agement, and before us, did promise that, upon the consumma- 
tion of the said marriage, he, the said John Shepard, sen. 
would give to his son, John Shepard, jun. the one half of his 
dwelling house, and the old barn, and the pasture before the 
barn; the old plow-land, and the old horse, when his colt 
was fit to ride, and his old oxen, when his steers were fit to 
work. All this he promised upon marriage as above said, 
which marriage was consummated upon March following, 
which is two years ago, come next March. Dated Feb. 25, 
1692. Taken on oath before me. Wm. Johnson.'* 

Page 64^ note ^. Town Records, July, 1698. 

Page 64y note 4. Records, Nov. 171 1. 

Page 6^y note i. Records, May, 171 2. 

Page 66 y note i. Records, 1735. 

Page 66, note 2. Whitfield in his journal wrote: *' About 
noon I reached Concord. Here I preached to some thousands 
in the open air; and comfortable preaching it was. The hear- 
ers were sweetly melted down. . . . The minister of the 
town being, I believe, a true child of God, I chose to stay all 
night at his house that we might rejoice together. The Lord 
was with us. The Spirit of the Lord came upon me and God 
gave me to wrestle with him for my friends, especially those 
then with me. . . . Brother B — s, the minister, broke into 
floods of tears, and we had reason to cry out it was good for 
us to be here." 



564 NOTES 

Page d/, note i. Church Records, July, 1792. 

Page 6y, note 2. The Rev. Daniel Bliss has left the name 
of having been an earnest, good mar, evidently emotional. 
His zealous and impassioned preaching gave oiFence to some 
of the cooler and more conservative clergy, and indeed bred 
discord in the church of Concord. The ** aggrieved brethren" 
withdrew, and, for want of a church, held public worship at 
a tavern where was the sign of a black horse, hence were 
called "the Black Horse Church.'* Their complaints pre- 
ferred against Mr. Bliss resulted in councils which drew in 
most of the churches of Middlesex into their widening vortex. 
Yet he remained the honored pastor 'of the town until his 
death. His daughter Phebe married the young William Em- 
erson, his successor; he was therefore Mr. Emerson's great- 
grandfather. 

Page dy, note j. Town Records. 

Page yOy note i. Town Records. 

Page yi, note i. Town Records. 

Page yiy 710 te 2. The spirited protest of this County Con- 
vention, presided over by Hon. James Prescott of Groton, is 
given in full in Shattuck's History y pp. 82—87. 

Page 72, note i. General Gage, the Governor, having 
refused to convene the General Court at Salem, the Provincial 
Congress of delegates from the towns of Massachusetts was 
called by conventions of the various counties to meet at Con- 
cord, October 11, 1774. The delegates assembled in the 
meeting-house, and organized, with John Hancock as Presi- 
dent, and Benjamin Lincoln as Secretary. Called together to 
maintain the rights of the people, this Congress assumed the 
government of the province, and by its measures prepared the 
way for the Revolution. 

Page 7^, note 2» This eloquent sermon to the volunteers 



NOTES 565 

of 1775, still preserved in MS., is very interesting. The 
young minister shows them the dignity of their calHng, warns 
them of the besetting sins of New England soldiery, explains 
to them the invasion of their rights and that they are not rebels, 
tells them that he believes their fathers foresaw the evil day 
and did all in their power to guard the infant state from en- 
croachments of unconstitutional power, and implores the sons 
to be true to their duty to their posterity. He fully admits 
the utter gloom of the prospect, humanly considered: would 
Heaven hold him innocent, he would counsel submission, but 
as an honest man and servant of Heaven he dare not do so, and 
with great spirit bids his injured countrymen ** Arise! and 
plead even with the sword, the firelock and the bayonet, the 
birthright of Englishmen . . . and if God does not help, it 
will be because your sins testify against you, otherwise pu 
may be assured.''^ 

Page 7^, note i. Journal, July, 1835. "It is affecting to 
see the old man's [Thaddeus Blood] memory taxed for facts 
occurring 60 years ago at Concord fight. * It is hard to bring 
them up;' he says, * the truth never will be known.' The 
Doctor [Ripley], like a keen hunter, unrelenting, follows him 
up and down, barricading him with questions. Yet cares little 
for the facts the man can tell, but much for the confirmation 
of the printed History. * Leave me, leave me to repose.' " 

Thaddeus Blood, who was only twenty years old at the 
time of Concord fight, later became a schoolmaster, hence 
was always known as ** Master Blood." He was one of the 
Concord company stationed at Hull, in 1776, which took 
part in the capture of Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell and his 
battalion of the 71st (Frazer) Highlanders as they sailed into 
Boston Harbor, not being aware of the evacuation of the town. 
They were confined at Concord until their exchange. See Sir 



566 NOTES 

Archibald Campbell of Inverneilly sometime Prisoner of War 
in the Jail at Concord, Massachusetts. By Charles H. 
Walcott, Boston, 1898. 

Page 7^, note 2. In his poem in memory of his brother 
Edward, written by the riverside near the battle-ground, Mr. 
Emerson alluded to 

Yon stern headstone. 
Which more of pride than pity gave 
To mark the Briton's friendless grave. 
Yet it is a stately tomb; 
The grand return 
Of eve and morn. 
The year's fresh bloom, 
' The silver cloud. 
Might grace the dust that is most proud. 

Page 7<5, note i. Captain Miles commanded the Concord 
company that joined the Northern Army at Ticonderoga in 
August, 1776, as part of Colonel Reed's regiment. 

Page 77, note i. Judge John S. Keyes, who clearly re- 
members the incidents of this celebration, seen from a boy's 
coign of vantage, the top of one of the inner doors of the 
church, tells me that the ten aged survivors of the battle, who 
sat in front of the pulpit, bowed in recognition of this 
compliment by the orator, and then the audience all bowed to 
them. The sanctity of the church forbade in those days cheer- 
ing or applause even at a civic festival. 

Page 77, note 2. The following was Mr. Emerson's note 
concerning his authorities: — 

** The importance which the skirmish at Concord Bridge 
derived from subsequent events, has, of late years, attracted 
much notice to the incidents of the day. There are, as might 



NOTES 567 

be expected, some discrepancies in the different narratives of 
the fight. In the brief summary in the text, I have relied 
mainly on the depositions taken by order of the Provincial 
Congress within a few days after the action, and on the other 
contemporary evidence. I have consulted the English narra- 
tive in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, and in the 
trial of Home (^ Cases adjudged in King's Bench; London, 
1800, vol. ii., p. 6'jj')i the inscription made by order of the 
legislature of Massachusetts on the two field-pieces presented 
to the Concord Artillery; Mr. Phinney's History of the Battle 
at Lexington ; Dr. Ripley's History of Concord Fight; Mr. 
Shattuck's narrative in his History y besides some oral and 
some manuscript evidence of eye-witnesses. The following 
narrative, written by Rev. William Emerson, a spectator of 
the action, has never been published. A part of it has been 
in my possession for years: a part of it I discovered, only a 
few days since, in a trunk of family papers: — 



€( ( 



^77 5 > ^9 April. This morning, between i and 2 
o'clock, we were alarmed by the ringing of the bell, and upon 
examination found that the troops, to the number of 800, had 
stole their march from Boston, in boats and barges, from the 
bottom of the Common over to a point in Cambridge, near to 
Inman's Farm, and were at Lexington Meeting-house, half 
an hour before sunrise, where they had fired upon a body of 
our men, and (as we afterward heard) had killed several. 
This intelligence was brought us at first by Dr. Samuel Prescott, 
who narrowly escaped the guard that were sent before on 
horses, purposely to prevent all posts and messengers from 
giving us timely information. He, by the help of a very fleet 
horse, crossing several walls and fences, arrived at Concord at 
the time above mentioned; when several posts were immedi- 



568 NOTES 

ately despatched, that returning confirmed the account of the 
regulars' arrival at Lexington, and that they were on their way 
to Concord. Upon this, a number of our minute-men belong- 
ing to this town, and Acton, and Lyncoln, with several others 
that were in readiness, marched out to meet them; while the 
alarm company were preparing to receive them in the town. 
Captain Minot, who commanded them, thought it proper to 
take possession of the hill above the meeting-house, as the most 
advantageous situation. No sooner had our men gained it, 
than we were met by the companies that were sent out to 
meet the troops, who informed us, that they were just upon 
us, and that we must retreat, as their number was more than 
treble ours. We then retreated from the hill near the Liberty 
Pole, and took a new post back of the town upon an emi- 
nence, where we formed into two battahons, and waited the 
arrival of the enemy. Scarcely had we formed, before we saw 
the British troops at the distance of a quarter of a mile, glit- 
tering in arms, advancing towards us with the greatest celerity. 
Some were for making a stand, notwithstanding the superior- 
ity of their number; but others more prudent thought best 
to retreat till our strength should be equal to the enemy's by 
recruits from neighboring towns that were continually coming 
in to our assistance. Accordingly we retreated over the bridge, 
when the troops came into the town, set fire to several car- 
riages for the artillery, destroyed 60 bbls. flour, rifled several 
houses, took possession of the town-house, destroyed 500 lb. 
of balls, set a guard of 1 00 men at the North Bridge, and sent 
up a party to the house of Colonel Barrett, where they were in 
expectation of finding a quantity of warlike stores. But these 
were happily secured, just before their arrival, by transporta- 
tion into the woods and other by-places. In the mean time, 
the guard set by the enemy to secure the pass at the North 



NOTES 569 

Bridge were alarmed by the approach of our people, who had 
retreated, as mentioned before, and were now advancing with 
special orders not to fire upon the troops unless fired upon. 
These orders were so punctually observed that we received the 
fire of the enemy in three several and separate discharges of 
their pieces before it was returned by our commanding officer; 
the firing then soon become general for several minutes, in 
which skirmish two were killed on each side, and several of 
the enemy wounded. It may here be observed, by the way, 
that we were the more cautious to prevent beginning a rupture 
with the King's troops, as we were then uncertain what had 
happened at Lexington, and knew [not] * that they had began 
the quarrel there by first firing upon our people, and killing 
eight men upon the spot. The three companies of troops soon 
quitted their post at the bridge, and retreated in the greatest 
disorder and confusion to the main body, who were soon upon 
the march to meet them. For half an hour, the enemy, by 
their marches and counter-marches, discovered great fickleness 
and inconstancy of mind, sometimes advancing, sometimes 
returning to their former posts ; till, at length they quitted the 
town, and retreated by the way they came. In the mean 
time, a party of our men (150) took the back way through 
the Great Fields into the east quarter, and had placed them- 
selves to advantage, lying in ambush behind walls, fences and 
buildings, ready to fire upon the enemy on their retreat. ' ' ' 

Page yS, note i. Fifty years after his death the town 
erected a cenotaph to the memory of its brave young minister, 
whose body lies by the shore of Otter Creek, near Rutland, 
Vermont. On it they wrote: — 

' Mr. Emerson believed the "not" had been accidentally omitted, and 
it can hardly be questioned that he was right in his supposition. 



570 NOTES 

*< Enthusiastic, eloquent, aiFectionate and pious, he loved 
his family, his people, his God and his Country, and to this 
last he yielded the cheerful sacrifice of his life." 

Page j8y note 2. Town Records, Dec. 1775. 

Page 7p, note i. These facts are recorded by Shattuck in 
his History. 

Page J^y note 2. Bradford's History of Massachusetts, 
vol. ii., p. 113. 

Page 7p, note j. Shattuck. 

Page 80y note i. Town Records, May 3, 1782. 

Page 81 y note i. Town Records, Sept. 9, and Bradford's 
History y vol. i., p. 266. 

Page 81 y note 2. The Rev. Grindall Reynolds, late pas- 
tor of the First Church in Concord, wrote an interesting ac- 
count of Shays' s Rebellion, and various papers concerning his 
adopted town which are included in his Historical and Other 
Papers, pubHshed by his daughter in 1895. 

Page 81 y note j. Town Records, Oct. 21. 

Page 82 y note i. Town Records, May 7. 

Page 82 y note 2, Town Records, 1834 and 1835. In 
1903-4 the town, with a population of about 5000, appro- 
priated for public purposes ^^65,752, the amount for school 
purposes being ^28,000. 

Page 82 y note j. The Unitarian and the ** Orthodox '* 
(as the Trinitarian Congregationalist society has always been 
called in Concord) churches have for a century been good 
neighbors, and for many years have held union meetings on 
Thanksgiving Day. At the time of Mr. Emerson's discourse 
it is doubtful if Concord contained a single Catholic or Epis- 
copalian believer. The beginning of the twentieth century 
finds a larger body of Catholic worshippers than the four other 
societies contain. Yet all live in charity with one another. 



NOTES 571 

Page 8 J, note i. Mr. Emerson's honored kinsman. Rev. 
Ezra Ripley, who sat in the pulpit that day, was eighty-four 
years old, and when, six years later, he died, he had been 
pastor of the Concord charch for sixty-three years. 

Page 8j, note 2. Lemuel Shattuck, author of the excel- 
lent History of Concord, which was published before the end 
of the year. 

P^Z^ 85 i ^ote I, In Mr. Emerson's lecturing excursions 
during the following thirty-five years, he found with pleasure 
and pride the sons of his Concord neighbors important men 
in the building up the prairie and river towns, or the making 
and operating the great highways of emigration and trade. 



LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 

April 19, 1838, Mr. Emerson made this entry in his 
Journal: — • 

" This disaster of the Cherokees, brought to me by a sad 
friend to blacken my days and nights! I can do nothing; why 
shriek ? why strike ineffectual blows ? I stir in it for the sad 
reason that no other mortal will move, and if I do not, why, 
it is left undone. The amount of it, to be sure, is merely 
a scream; but sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. 

** Yesterday wrote the letter to Van Buren, — a letter hated 
of me, a deliverance that does not deliver the soul. I write 
my journal, I read my lecture with joy; but this stirring in the 
philanthropic mud gives me no peace. I will let the republic 
alone until the republic comes to me. I fully sympathize, be 
sure, with the sentiments I write; but I accept it rather from 



572 NOTES 

my friends than dictate it. It is not my impulse to say it, and 
therefore my genius deserts me; no muse befriends; no music 
of thought or word accompanies." 

Yet his conscience then, and many a time later, brought 
him to do the brave, distasteful duty. 



ADDRESS ON EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH 
WEST INDIES 

The tenth anniversary of the emancipation by Act of Par- 
liament of all slaves in the insular possessions of Great Britain 
in the West Indies was celebrated in Concord, in the year 
1 844, by citizens of thirteen Massachusetts towns, and they 
invited Mr. Emerson to make the Address. The Rev. Dr. 
Channing, on whose mind the wrongs of the slave had weighed 
ever since he had seen them in Santa Cruz, had spoken on 
Slavery in Faneuil Hall in 1837, had written on the subject, 
and his last public work had been a speech on the anniversary 
of the West Indian Emancipation in 1842, in the village of 
Lenox. The public conscience was slowly becoming aroused, 
especially among the country people, who had not the mercantile 
and social relations with the Southerner which hampered the 
action of many people in the cities. Yet even in Concord the 
religious societies appear to have closed their doors against the 
philanthropists who gathered to celebrate this anniversary in 
i 844, but the energy of the young Thoreau, always a cham- 
pion of Freedom, secured the use of the Court-House, and 
he himself rang the bell to call the people together. 

It is said that Mr. Emerson, while minister of the Second 
Church in Boston, had held his pulpit open to speakers on 
behalf of liberty, and to his attitude in 1835 Harriet Martineau 



NOTES 573 

bears witness in her Autobiography. After speaking of the 
temperamental unfitness of these brother scholars, Charles and 
Waldo, to become active workers in an Abolitionist organiza- 
tion, she says: *' Yet they did that which made me feel that 
I knew them through the very cause in which they did not 
implicate themselves. At the time of the hubbub against me in 
Boston, Charles Emerson stood alone in a large company and 
declared that he would rather see Boston in ashes than that I 
or anybody should be debarred in any way from perfectly free 
speech. His brother Waldo invited me to be his guest in the 
midst of my unpopularity, and during my visit told me his 
course about this matter of slavery. He did not see that there 
was any particular thing for him to do in it then; but when, 
in coaches or steamboats or anywhere else, he saw people of 
color ill treated, or heard bad doctrine or sentiment propounded, 
he did what he could, and said what he thought. Since that 
date he has spoken more abundantly and boldly, the more crit- 
ical the times became; and he is now, and has long been, iden- 
tified with the Abolitionists in conviction and sentiment, though 
it is out of his way to join himself to their organization.'* 

Mr. Cabot in his Memoir ^ gives several pages of extracts 
from Mr. Emerson's journal showing his feehngs at this time, 
before the slave power, aggressive and advancing, left him, as 
a lover of Freedom, no choice but to fight for her as he could, 
by tongue and pen, in seasons of peril. 

This Address was printed in England, as well as in Amer- 
ica, the autumn after its delivery here. In a letter to Carlyle 
written September i, Mr. Emerson says he is sending proof 
to the London publisher. 

** Chapman wrote to me by the last steamer, urging me to 
send him some manuscript that had not yet been published in 
» Vol. ii., pp. 424-433. 



574 NOTES 

America [hoping for copyright, and promising half profits] . 
. . . The request was so timely, since I was not only print- 
ing a book, but also a pamphlet, that I came to town yesterday 
and hastened the printers, and have now sent him proofs 
of all the Address, and of more than half of the book. ' * He 
requests Carlyle to have an eye to its correct reproduction, 
to which his friend faithfully attended. 

Page 100, note i. It was characteristic of Mr. Emerson 
that, as a corrective to the flush of righteous wrath that man 
should be capable of 

laying hands on another 
To coin his labor and sweat, 
came his sense of justice, and the power of seeing the planter's 
side, born into such a social and political condition, by breed- 
ing and climatic conditions unable to toil, and withihis whole 
inheritance vested in slaves. In a speech in New York in 
1855, Mr. Emerson urged emancipation with compensation 
to the owners, by general sacrifices to this great end by old 
and young throughout the North, not as the planters* due, 
but as recognizing their need and losses. Yet with all due con- 
sideration for the planters' misfortune of condition, he said, 
oh the main question, " It is impossible to be a gentleman and 
not be an abolitionist." 

Page lOJy note i. 

Sole estate his sire bequeathed, — 
Hapless sire to hapless son, — 
Was the wailing song he breathed. 
And his chain when life was done. 

These lines from * * Voluntaries ' ' in the Poems, and the stanza 
which there follows them, are recalled by this passage. 



NOTES 575 

Page io6y note i. Granville Sharp (1734-18 13) was 
a broad-minded scholar and determined philanthropist. He 
left the study of law to go into the ordnance office, which he 
left, when the American Revolution came on, disapproving of 
the course of the government. In the case of one of the slaves 
whom he defended, the Lord Mayor discharged the negro, but 
his master would not give him up. The case then went before 
the Court of ICings Bench, and the twelve judges decided in 
1772 that a man could not be held in, or transported from, 
England. In June, 1787, Sharp with Clarkson and ten others, 
nine of whom were Quakers, formed a committee '* for effect- 
ing the abolition of the slave trade;" Sharp was chairman. 
Defeated in Parliament in 1788 and 1789, they were joined 
by Pitt and Fox in 1790. In 1793 the Commons passed an 
act for gradual abolition of the trade, which was rejected by 
the Peers. This occurred again in 1795 and 1804. In 1806, 
the Fox and Grenville Ministry brought forward abolition of 
the trade as a government measure. It was carried in 1807. 
Then the enemies of slavery began to strive for its gradual 
abolition throughout the British dominions, Clarkson, Wilber- 
force and Buxton being the principal leaders. The course of 
events, however, showed that immediate emancipation would 
be a better measure. The government brought this forward in 
1823, modified by an apprenticeship system. The bill with 
this feature and some compensation to owners was passed in 
1833. 

Page io8y note i. In the essay on Self-Reliance Mr. 
Emerson said: ** An institution is the lengthened shadow of 
one man; as Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Re- 
formation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of 
Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson." 

Page 112, note i. The ** pr£edials " seem to have been 



576 NOTES 

the slaves born into captivity, as distinguished from imported 
slaves. 

Page ll^i note i. Emancipation in the West Indies: A 
Six Months^ Tour in Antigua^ Barbadoes and Jamaica, in 
the year 183J. By J. A. Thome and J. H. Kimball, New 
York, 1838. 

Page 120, note i. This was very soon after the corona- 
tion of the young Queen Victoria, which occurred in the 
previous year. 

Page 12^, note i. ** All things are moral, and in their 
boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual 
nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color and mo- 
tion; that every globe in the remotest heaven, every chemical 
change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of Hfe . . . 
every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall 
hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo 
the Ten Commandments. ' ' — Nature, Addresses and Lectures, 
p. 40. See also the last sentence in " Prudence," Essays, 
First Series. 

Page ijly note i. ** For he [a ruler] is the minister of 
God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be 
afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the 
minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that 
doeth evil." Epistle to the Romans, xiii. 4. 

Page IJ2, note i. The cause for Mr. Emerson's indigna- 
tion was great and recent. His honored townsman, Samuel 
Hoar, Esq., sent by the State of Massachusetts as her com- 
missioner to South Carolina to investigate the seizures, im- 
prisonments, punishments, and even sale of colored citizens 
of Massachusetts who had committed no crime, had been 
expelled with threats of violence from the city of Charleston. 
(See ** Samuel Hoar," 'm Lectures and Biographical Sketches.') 



NOTES 577 

Page 133 » note I. 

A union then of honest men. 
Or union never more again. 

** Boston," Poems. 
Page I34i 'note I. John Quincy Adams, who, though 
disapproving, as untimely, the legislation urged on Congress 
by the abolitionists, yet fought strongly and persistently against 
the rules framed to check their importunity, as inconsistent 
with the right of petition itself. 

Page I44i note i. Here comes in the doctrine of the 
Survival of the Fittest that appears in the ** Ode inscribed to 
W. H. Channing," but, even more than there, tempered by 
faith in the strength of humanity. See the <* Lecture on the 
Times," given in 1841 (^Nature , Addresses and Lectures ^ 
p. 220), for considerations on slavery more coolly philo- 
sophical than Mr. Emerson's warm blood often admitted 
of, during the strife for liberty in the period between the 
Mexican and Civil Wars. 
Page 143, note i. 

To-day unbind the captive. 
So only are ye unbound; 
Lift up a people from the dust. 
Trump of their rescue, sound ! 

** Boston Hymn," Poems. 
Page 146) note l. In the early version of the ** Boston " 
poem were these lines: — 

O pity that I pause! 

The song disdaining shuns 
To name the noble sires, because 

Of the unworthy sons. 



XI 



578 NOTES 

Your town is full of gentle names. 

By patriots once were watchwords made; 

Those war-cry names are muffled shames 
On recreant sons mislaid. 



WAR 

In the winter and early spring of 1838, the American 
Peace Society held a course of lectures in Boston. This lec- 
ture w^as the seventh in the course. Mr. Alcott wrote in his 
diary at that time: — 

*« I heard Emerson's lecture on Peace y as the closing dis- 
course of a series delivered at the Odeon before the American 
Peace Society. . . . After the lecture I saw Mr. Garrison, 
who is at this time deeply interested in the question of Peace, 
as are many of the meekest and noblest souls amongst us. 
He expressed his great pleasure in the stand taken by Mr. 
Emerson and his hopes in him as a man of the new age. This 
great topic has been brought before the general mind as a 
direct consequence of the agitation of the abolition of slavery.'* 

The lecture was printed in 1 849 in Esthetic Papers , edited 
by Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody. 

Although the chronicles of the campaigns and acts of 
prowess of the masterly soldiers were always attractive read- 
ing to Mr. Emerson, — much more acts of patriotic devotion 
in the field, — and he was by no means committed as a non-" 
resistant, he saw that war had been a part of evolution, and 
that its evils might pave the way for good, as flowers spring 
up next year on a field of carnage. He knew that evolution 
required an almost divine patience, yet his good hope was 



NOTES 579 

strengthened by the signs of the times,^ and he desired to 
hasten the great upward step in civilization. 

It is evident from his vv^ords and course of action during the 
outrages upon the peaceful settlers of Kansas, and when Sum- 
ter was fired upon and Washington threatened, that he recog- 
nized that the hour had not yet come. He subscribed lavishly 
from his limited means for the furnishing Sharp's rifles to 
the ** Free State men.'* In the early days of the War of the 
RebelHon he visited Charlestown Navy- Yard to see the 
preparations, and said, *«Ah! sometimes gunpowder smells 
good." In the opening of his address at Tufts College, in 
July, 1 86 1, he said, ** The brute noise of cannon has a most 
poetic echo in these days, as instrument of the primal senti- 
ments of humanity." Several speeches included in this 
volume show that at that crisis his feeling was, as he had said 
of the forefathers' ** deed of -blood " at Concord Bridge, — 

Even the serene Reason says 
It was well done. 

But all this was only a postponement of hope. 

Page 1^2 y note i. With regard to schooling a man's cour- 
age for whatever may befall, Mr. Emerson said: " Our cul- 
ture therefore must not omit the arming of the man. Let 
him hear in season that he is born into the state of war, and 
that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he 
should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self- 
collected and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let 
him take both reputation and life in his hand, and with perfect 
urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of 
his speech and the rectitude of his behavior." — ** Heroism," 
EssaySy First Series. 



58o NOTES 

" A state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, 
is so far valuable that it puts every man on trial." — ** The 
Conservative," Nature y Addresses and Lectures. 

Page l^6y note z. Mr. Emerson used to take pleasure in 
a story illustrating this common foible of mankind. A re- 
turned Arctic explorer, in a lecture, said, ** In this wilderness 
among the ice-floes, I had the fortune to see a terrible conflict 
between two Polar bears — " ** Which beat?" cried an 
excited voice from the audience. 

Page i60y note i. In his description of the Tower of Lon- 
don in the journal of 1834, it appears that the suits of armor 
there set up affected Mr. Emerson unpleasantly, suggesting 
half-human destructive lobsters and crabs. It is, I believe, said 
that Benvenuto Cellini learned to make the cunning joints in 
armor for men from those of these marine warriors. 

In the opening paragraphs of the essay on Inspiration Mr. 
Emerson congratulates himself that the doleful experiences of 
the aboriginal man were got through with long ago. ** They 
combed his mane, they pared his nails, cut ofi^his tail, set him 
on end, sent him to school and made him pay taxes, before 
he could begin to write his sad story for the compassion or the 
repudiation of his descendants, who are all but unanimous to 
disown him. We must take him as we find him," etc. 

Page 162 i note i. In English Traits y at the end of the 
chapter on Stonehenge, Mr. Emerson gave a humorous ac- 
count of his setting forth the faith or hope of the non-resistants 
and idealists in New England, to the amazed and shocked 
ears of Carlyle and Arthur Helps. 

Page l64y note I. *< As the solidest rocks are made up of 
invisible gases, as the world is made of thickened light and 
arrested electricity, so men know that ideas are the parents 
of men and things; there was never anything that did not 



NOTES 581 

proceed from a thought." — ** The Scholar,*' Lectures and 
Biographical Sketches. 

Page 164, note 2. In '* The Problem" he says of the 
Parthenon and England's abbeys that 

out of Thought's interior sphere 
These wonders rose to upper ah*. 

Page 167, note i. Mr. Emerson in his conversation frankly 
showed that he was not yet quite prepared to be a non-resistant. 
He would have surely followed his own counsel where he 
says, ** Go face the burglar in your own house," and he seemed 
to feel instinctive sympathy with what Mr. Dexter, the counsel, 
said in the speech which he used to read me from the Self- 
ridge trial: — 

** And may my arm drop powerless when it fails to defend 
my honor ! ' ' 

He exactly stated his own position in a later passage, where 
he says that *' in a given extreme event Nature and God will 
instruct him in that hour." 

Page 1^2, note z. Thoreau lived frankly and fearlessly up 
to this standard. 

Page 17J, note i. This same view is even more attract- 
ively set forth in "Aristocracy " (^Lectures and Biographical 
Sketches, pp. 36-40). 

Rev. Dr. Cyrus A. Bartol, in an interesting paper on 
*< Emerson's Religion," ^ gives, among other reminiscences, 
the following: ** I asked him if he approved of war. * Yes,' 
he said, <in one born to fight.' " 

^ The Genius and Character of Emerson ,• Lectures at the Concord School 
of Philosophy y edited by F. B. Sanborn. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 
1885. 



582 NOTES 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, CONCORD, 1851 

The opening passages of this speech to his friends and neigh- 
bors show how deeply Mr. Emerson was moved. He could 
no longer be philosophical, as in the ** Ode '* inscribed to his 
friend William Channing, and in earlier addresses. The time 
had come when he might at any moment be summoned to 
help the marshal's men seize and return to bondage the poor 
fugitive who had almost reached the safety of England's pro- 
tection. Such men were frequently passing through Concord, 
concealed and helped by the good Bigelow, the blacksmith, 
and his wife, the Thoreaus, Mrs. Brooks, and even once at a 
critical moment by her husband, the law-abiding ** 'Squire " 
himself. 

Mr. Emerson instantly took his stand, and did not hesitate 
to run atilt against the dark giant, once so honored. The 
question of secession for conscience' sake had come up among 
the AboHtionists. Mr. Emerson had stood for Union, yet felt 
that there could be nothing but shame in Union until the 
humiliating statute was repealed. Meanwhile he fell back on 
the reserve -right of individual revolution as the duty of honest 
men. The Free-Soilers soon after renominated Dr. John 
Gorham Palfrey for a seat in Congress, and in his campaign 
Mr. Emerson delivered this speech in several Middlesex towns. 
In Cambridge he was interrupted by young men from the 
college. Southerners, it was said, but it appears that the dis- 
turbance was quite as much due to ' * Northern men who were 
eager to keep up a show of fidelity to the interest of the South," 
as a Southern student said in a dignified disclaimer. Mr. Cabot 



NOTES 583 

in his Memoir gives an interesting account by Professor James 
B. Thayer of Mr. Emerson's calm ignoring of the rude and 
hostile demonstration. 

Writing to Carlyle, in the end of July, 1857, Mr. Emer- 
son said : "In the spring, the abomination of our Fugitive 
Slave Bill drove me to some writing and speech-making, w^ith- 
out hope of effect, but to clear my own skirts." 

This was the reaction which could not but be felt by him 
where he had been forced to descend into the dust and con- 
flict of the arena from the serene heights. He wrote in his 
journal next year: — 

** Philip Randolph [a valued friend] was surprised to find 
me speaking to the politics of anti-slavery in Philadelphia. I 
suppose because he thought me a believer in general laws and 
that it was a kind of distrust of my own general teachings to 
appear in active sympathy with these temporary heats. He is 
right so far as it is becoming in the scholar to insist on central 
soundness rather than on superficial applications. I am to give 
a wise and just ballot, though no man else in the republic doth. 
I am to demand the absolute right, affirm that, and do that; 
but not push Boston into a showy and theatrical attitude, 
endeavoring to persuade her she is more virtuous than she is. 
Thereby I am robbing myself more than I am enriching the 
public. After twenty, fifty, a hundred years, it will be quite 
easy to discriminate who stood for the right, and who for the 
expedient." 

Yet however hard the duty of the hour might be, Mr. 
Emerson never failed in his duty as a good citizen to come 
to the front in dark days. 

** In spite of all his gracefulness and reserve and love of the 
unbroken tranquillity of serene thought, he was by the right 
of heredity a belligerent in the cause of Freedom." 



584 NOTES 

Page 181, note i. Shadrach was hurried to Concord after 
his rescue, and by curious coincidence Edwin Bigelow, the 
good village blacksmith who there harbored him and drove 
him to the New Hampshire line, was one of the jurors in the 
trial of another rescue case. 

Page l8j, note i. Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal, 
after Mr. Hoar's return: — 

«* The position of Massachusetts seems to me to be better for 
Mr. Hoar's visit to South Carolina in this point, that one illu- 
sion is dispelled. Massachusetts was dishonored before, but she 
was credulous in the protection of the Constitution, and either 
did not believe, or affected not to believe in that she was dishon- 
ored. Now all doubt on that subject is removed, and every Caro- 
lina boy will not fail to tell every Massachusetts boy whenever 
they meet how the fact stands. The Boston merchants would 
willingly salve the matter over, but they cannot hereafter re- 
ceive Southern gentlemen at their tables without a conscious- 
ness of shame." • 

Page ig2, note i. Apparently from Vattel, book i., ch. 
i., p. 79. 

Page 201, note i. 

But there was chaff within the flour. 

And one was false in ten. 
And reckless clerks in lust of power 

Forgot the rights of men; 
Cruel and blind did file their mind. 
And sell the blood of human kind. 

Your town is full of gentle names 

By patriots onee were watchwords made; 

Those war-cry names are muffled shames 
On recreant sons mislaid. 



NOTES 585 

What slave shall dare a name to wear 
Once Freedom's passport everywhere ? 

See note to poem ** Boston.** 

Mr. Charles Francis Adams's Life of Richard H. Dana 
gives light on the phrase used in the first of these verses. The 
following passage is from Mr. Dana's journal during the trial 
of Anthony Burns, the fugitive: — 

*< Choate, I had an amusing interview with. I asked him 
to make one effort in favor of freedom, and told him that the 
1850 delusion was dispelled and all men were coming round, 
the Board of Brokers and Board of Aldermen were talking 
treason, and that he must come and act. He said he should 
be glad to make an effort on our side, but that he had given 
written opinions against us in the Sims case on every point, 
and that he could not go against them. 

" 'You corrupted your mind in 1850.* 

" * Yes. Filed my mind.' 

** * I wish you would file it in court for our benefit.* *' 

Shakspeare said, — 

** For Banquo*s issue have I filed my mind.** 

Page 202, note i. Mr. F. B. Sanborn, in his Life of 
Thoreau, says that Webster gave, as a reason for not visidng 
Concord in his later years, that ** Many of those whom I so 
highly esteemed in your beautiful and quiet village have be- 
come a good deal estranged, to my great grief, by abolitionism, 
free-soilism, transcendentalism and other notions which I can- 
not but regard as so many vagaries of the imagination." 

Page 20 4y note i. 

Or who, with accent bolder. 

Dare praise the fi-eedom-loving mountaineer ? 



586 NOTES 

I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook! 
And in thy valleys, Agiochook ! 
The jackals of the negro-holder. 

Virtue palters; Right is hence; 
Freedom praised, but hid; 
Funeral eloquence 
Rattles the coffin-lid. 

Poems y " Ode,'* inscribed to W. H. Channing. 

See also what is said of " the treachery of scholars " in the 
last pages of *' The Man of Letters,'' Lectures and Biograph- 
ical Sketches, 

Page 2og, note i. This appeal for a general movement in 
the free states to free the slaves and to recompense the plant- 
ers, unhappily brought up to the insdtution, for their loss, was so 
much better in an anti-slavery address in New York, in 1855, 
than in the Concord speech four years earlier, that I have sub- 
stituted the later version here. In Mr. Cabot's Memoir, 
pp. 558-593, a portion of the New York speech, including 
this paragraph, is given. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, NEW YORK, 1854 

Writing to his friend Carlyle on March 11, 1854, ^^* 
Emerson said : — 

" One good word closed your letter in September . . . 
namely, that you might come westward when Frederic was 
disposed of. Speed Frederic, then, for all reasons and for this ! 
America is growing furiously, town and state; new Kansas, 
new Nebraska looming up in these days, vicious politicians 



NOTES 587 

seething a wretched destiny for them already at Washington. 
The politicians shall be sodden, the States escape, please Godl 
The fight of slave and freeman drawing nearer, the question is 
sharply, whether slavery or whether freedom shall be abolished. 
Come and see.*' 

Four days before thus writing, he had given this address, to a 
fairly large audience, in the ** Tabernacle " in New York City, 
for, however dark the horizon looked, the very success of the 
slave power was working its ruin. Encouraged by the submis- 
sion of the North to the passage of the evil law to pacify them, 
they had resolved to repeal the Missouri Compromise, which 
confined slavery to a certain latitude. It was repealed within 
a few days of the time Mr. Emerson made this address. Dur- 
ing the debate, Charles Sumner said to Douglas, ** Sir, the 
bill you are about to pass is at once the worst and the best on 
which Congress has ever acted. ... It is the worst bill 
because it is a present victory for slavery. . . . Sir, it is the 
best bill on which Congress has ever acted, /or it annuls all 
past compromises with slavery and makes any future compro- 
mises impossible. Thus it puts Freedom and Slavery face to 
face and bids them grapple. Who can doubt the result?'* 
The rendition to slavery of Anthony Burns from Boston in 
May wrought a great change in public feeling there. Even 
the commercial element in the North felt the shame. 

Though not a worker in the anti-slavery organization, Mr. 
Emerson had always been the outspoken friend of freedom for 
the negroes. Witness his tribute in 1837 to Elijah Lovejoy, 
the martyr in their cause (see "Heroism," Essays, First 
Series, p. 262, and note). But the narrow and uncharitable 
speech and demeanor of many ** philanthropists " led him to 
such reproofs as the one quoted by Dr. Bartol, ** Let them 
first be anthropic," or that in ** Self-Rehance " to the angry 



588 NOTES 

bigot: ** Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good- 
natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your 
hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for 
black folk a thousand miles off.'* 

But now the foe was at the very gate. The duty to resist 
was instant and commanding. Mr. Emerson wrote in his jour- 
nal, soon after: — 

** Why do we not say. We are abolitionists of the most abso- 
lute abolition, as every man that is a man must be ? . . . We 
do not try to alter your laws in Alabama, nor yours in Japan, 
or in the Feejee Islands; but we do not admit them, or permit 
a trace of them here. Nor shall we suffer you to carry your 
Thuggism, north, south, east or west into a single rod of terri- 
tory which we control. We intend to set and keep a cordon 
sanitaire all around the infected district, and by no means suffer 
the pestilence to spread. 

** It is impossible to be a gentleman, and not be an abolition- 
ist, for a gentleman is one who is fulfilled with all nobleness, 
and imparts it; is the natural defender and raiser of the weak 
and oppressed.*' 

With Mr. Emerson's indignation at Webster's fall was 
mingled great sorrow. From his youth he had admired and 
revered him. The verses about him printed in the Appendix 
to the Poems show the change of feeling. He used to quote 
Browning's '« Lost Leader" as applying to him, and admired 
Whittier's fine poem ** Ichabod " (** The glory is departed," 
I. Samuel, iv., 21, 22) on his apostasy. 

Mr. Emerson's faithfulness to his sense of duty, leading 
him, against his native instincts, into the turmoil of politics, 
striving to undo the mischief that a leader once revered had 
wrought in the minds of Americans, is shown in the extract 
from his journal with regard to this lecture: — 



NOTES 589 

" At New York Tabernacle, on the 7th March, I saw the 
great audience with dismay, and told the bragging secretary 
that I was most thankful to those that staid at home; every 
auditor was a new affliction, and if all had staid away, by rain 
or preoccupation, I had been best pleased." 

Page 21^, note i. In Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 
in the essay on Aristocracy, and also in that on The Man of 
Letters, the duty of loyalty to his thought and his order is 
urged as a trait of the gentleman and the scholar, and in the 
latter essay, the scholar's duty to stand for what is generous 
and free. 

Page 2ig, note i. Mr. Emerson in his early youth did 
come near slavery for a short time. His diary at St. Augus- 
tine, quoted by Mr. Cabot in his Memoir, mentions that, 
while he was attending a meeting of the Bible Society, a slave- 
auction was going on outside, but it does not appear that he 
actually saw it. 

Page 221, note i. Carlyle described Webster as ** a 
magnificent specimen. ... As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or 
Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at 
first sight against all the extant world. The tanned com- 
plexion, that amorphous, crag-like face, the dull black eyes 
under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces 
needing only to be blown, the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed: 
— I have not traced as much of silent Berserkir-rage, that I 
remember of, in any other man." ^ 

Page 22^, note I. Mr. James S. Gibbons (of the Netu 
York Tribune^ in a letter written to his son two days after 
this speech was delivered, says, referring evidently to this 
passage: — 

** Emerson gave us a fine lecture on Webster. He made 

* Correspondence of Carlyle and Enter son ^ vol. i., pp. 260, 26 1. 



590 NOTES 

him stand before us in the proportions of a giant; and then 
with one word crushed him to powder.*' 

Page 2263 note i. Professor John H. Wright of Harvard 
University has kindly furnished me with the passage from 
Dio Cassius, xlvii. 49, where it is said of Brutus: — 
Kat avajSorjaas rovro Brj 'UpaKXecov 

w tXtjixov aperri, Xoyos ap* ^<r^', eyu) 8e (TC 
ws tpyov rjCTKovv crv 8' ap eSovA,€V€s Tvxyy — 
TrapaKaXecre rtva twv crwdvTOJV, «/* avrov aTroKTeLvrj, — 
which he renders, " He cried out this sentiment of Heracles, 
* O wretched Virtue, after all, thou art a name, but I cher- 
ished thee as a fact. Fortune's slave wast thou; ' and called 
upon one of those with him to slay him." 

Professor Wright adds that Theodorus Prodromus, a Byzan- 
tine poet of the twelfth century, said, ** What Brutus says 
(O Virtue, etc.) I pronounce to be ignoble and unworthy 
of Brutus' s soul." It seems very doubtful whence the Greek 
verses came. 

Page 2JJ, note I. Just ten years earlier, Hon. Samuel 
Hoar, the Commissioner of Massachusetts, sent to Charleston, 
South Carolina, in the interests of our colored citizens there 
constantly imprisoned and ill used, had been expelled from 
that state with a show of force. See Lectures and Biograph- 
ical Sketches, 

Page 234, note z. The sending back of Onesimus by Paul 
was a precedent precious in the eyes of pro-slavery preachers. 
North and South, in those days, ignoring, however, Paul's 
message, *' Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a bro- 
ther beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, 
both in the flesh and in the Lord. If thou count me therefore 
a partner, receive him as myself." ^ 

* Epistle of Paul to Philemon, i. 16, 17. 



NOTES 591 

Page 2J^y note i. The hydrostatic paradox has been be- 
fore alluded to as one of Mr. Emerson's favorite symbols, the 
balancing of the ocean by a few drops of water. In many 
places he dwells on the power of minorities — a minority of 
one. In ** Character " (^Lectures and Biographical Sketches') 
he says, ** There was a time when Christianity existed in one 
child.'* For the value and duty of minorities, see Conduct of 
Life, pp. 249 fF., Letters and Social Aims, pp. 219, 220. 

Page 2j6, note i. This was a saying of Mahomet. What 
follows, with regard to the divine sentiments always soliciting 
us, is thus rendered in *' My Garden: " 

Ever the words of the gods resound; 
But the porches of man's ear 
Seldom in this low life's round 
Are unsealed, that he may hear. 

Page 2j6, note 2. This is the important key to the essay 
on Self-Reliance. 

Page 2j8y note i. In the *' Sovereignty of Ethics " Mr. 
Emerson quotes an Oriental poet describing the Golden Age 
as saying that God had made justice so dear to the heart of 
Nature that, if any injustice lurked anywhere under the sky, 
the blue vault would shrivel to a snake-skin, and cast it out 
by spasms. 

Page 240, note i. There seems to be some break in the 
construction here probably due to the imperfect adjustment of 
lecture-sheets. It would seem that the passage should read: 
** Liberty is never cheap. It is made difficult because freedom 
is the accomplishment and perfectness of man — the finished 
man; earning and bestowing good; " etc. 

Page 241, note I. ^^^ Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 
pp. 246 and 251. 



592 NOTES 

Page 242, note I. The occasion alluded to was Hon. 
Robert C. Winthrop's speech to the alumni of Harvard Col- 
lege on Commencement Day in 1852. What follows is not 
an abstract, but Mr. Emerson's rendering of the spirit of his 
address. 



THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 

One evening in May, Judge Hoar came to Mr. Emerson's 
house, evidently deeply stirred, and told in a few words the 
startling news that the great Senator from Massachusetts had 
been struck down at his desk by a Representative from South 
Carolina, and was dangerously hurt. The news was heard 
with indignant grief in Concord, and a public meeting was 
held four days later in which Mr. Emerson and others gave 
vent to this feeling. 

Among Mr. Emerson's papers are the fragmentary notes 
on Sumner, given below, without indication as to when they 
were used. 

CHARLES SUMNER 

Clean, self-poised, great-hearted man, noble in person, in- 
corruptible in life, the friend of the poor, the champion of the 
oppressed. 

Of course Congress must draw from every part of the coun- 
try swarms of individuals eager only for private interests, 
who could not love his stern justice. But if they gave him 
no high employment, he made low work high by the dignity 
of honesty and truth. But men cannot long do without faculty 



NOTES 593 

and perseverance, and he rose, step by step, to the mastery of 
all aiFairs intrusted to him, and by those lights and upliftings 
with which the spirit that makes the Universe rewards labor 
and brave truth. He became learned, and adequate to the 
highest questions, and the counsellor of every correction of old 
errors, and of every noble reform. How nobly he bore him- 
self in disastrous times. Every reform he led or assisted. In 
the shock of the war his patriotism never failed. A man of 
varied learning and accomplishments. 

He held that every man is to be judged by the horizon of 
his mind, and Fame he defined as the shadow of excellence, 
but that which follows him, not which he follows after. 

Tragic character, like Algernon Sydney, man of conscience 
and courage, but without humor. Fear did not exist for him. 
In his mind the American idea is no crab, but a man inces- 
santly advancing, as the shadow of the dial or the heavenly 
body that casts it. The American idea is emancipation, to 
abolish kingcraft, feudalism, black-letter monopoly, it pulls 
down the gallows, explodes priestcraft, opens the doors of 
the sea to all emigrants, extemporizes government in new 
country. 

Sumner has been collecting his works. They will be the 
history of the Republic for the last twenty-five years, as told 
by a brave, perfectly honest and well instructed man, with 
social culture and relation to all eminent persons. Diligent 
and able workman, with rare ability, without genius, without 
humor, but with persevering study, wide reading, excellent 
memory, high stand of honor (and pure devotion to his coun- 
try), disdaining any bribe, any compliances, and incapable 
of falsehood. His singular advantages of person, of manners, 
and a statesman's conversation impress every one favorably. 
He has the foible of most public men, the egotism which seems 

XI 



594 NOTES 

almost unavoidable at Washington. I sat in his foom once at 
Washington whilst he wrote a weary procession of letters, — 
he writing without pause as fast as if he were copying. He 
outshines all his. mates in historical conversation, and is so 
public in his regards that he cannot be relied on to push an 
office-seeker, so that he is no favorite with politicians. But 
wherever I have met with a dear lover of the country and its 
moral interests, he is sure to be a supporter of Sumner. 

It characterizes a man for me that he hates Charles Sumner: 
for it shows that he cannot discriminate between a foible and 
a vice. Sumner's moral instinct and character are so excep- 
tionally pure that he must have perpetual magnetism for honest 
men; his ability and working energy such, that every good 
friend of the Republic must stand by him. Those who come 
near him and are oiFended by his egotism, or his foible (if you 
please) of using classic quotations, or other bad tastes, easily 
forgive these whims, if themselves are good, or magnify them 
into disgust, if they themselves are incapable of his virtue. 

And when he read one night in Concord a lecture on 
Lafayette we felt that of all Americans he was best entitled by 
his own character and fortunes to read that eulogy. 

Every Pericles must have his Cleon: Sumner had his adver- 
saries, his wasps and back-biters. We almost wished that he 
had not stooped to answer them. But he condescended to give 
them truth and patriotism, without asking whether they could 
appreciate the instruction or not. 

A man of such truth that he can be truly described: he 
needs no exaggerated praise. Not a man of extraordinary 
genius, but a man of great heart, of a perpetual youth, with 
the highest sense of honor, incapable of any fraud, little or 
large; loving his friend and loving his country, with perfect 
steadiness to his purpose, shunning no labor that his aim 



NOTES 595 

required, and his works justified him by their scope and thor- 
oughness. 

He had good masters, who quickly found that they had a 
good scholar. He read law with Judge Story, who was at the 
head of the Law School at Harvard University, and who 
speedily discovered the value of his pupil, and called him to 
his assistance in the Law School. He had a great talent for 
labor, and spared no time and no research to make himself 
master of his subject. His treatment of every question was 
faithful and exhaustive, and marked always by the noble senti- 
ment. 

Page 2^2^ note i. With this message of comfort to Sum- 
ner, struck down for his defence of Liberty, may be contrasted 
what is said of Webster when he abandoned her cause: — 

*« Those to whom his name was once dear and honored, as 
the manly statesman to whom the choicest gifts of Nature had 
been accorded, disown him: ... he who was their pride 
in the woods and mountains of New England is now their 
mortification, — they have torn his picture from the wall, they 
have thrust his speeches into the chimney,*' etc. — ** Address 
on the Fugitive Slave Law," at Concord, 1851. 



SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 

By an act of Congress, passed in May, 1854, the territories 
of Kansas and Nebraska were organized, and in a section of 
that act it was declared that the Constitution and all the laws 
of the United States should be in force in these territories, 
except the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820, which was 



596 NOTES 

declared inoperative and void. The act thereby repealed had 
confined slavery to the region of the Louisiana Purchase south 
of latitude 36°, 30' North. Foreseeing the probable success 
of this measure to increase the area of slavery. Emigrant Aid 
Societies had been formed in Massachusetts first, and later, in 
Connecticut, w^hich assisted Northern emigrants to the settle- 
ment of this fertile region. Settlers from the Northwestern 
States also poured in, and also from Missouri, the latter bring- 
ing slaves with them. A fierce struggle, lasting for some years 
and attended with bloodshed and barbarities, began at once, 
hordes of armed men fi"om the border state of Missouri con- 
stantly voting at Kansas elections and intimidating the free 
state settlers, and even driving parties of immigrants out of 
the state. Franklin Pierce was then President, and threw the 
influence and power of the administration on the side of the 
pro-slavery party in Kansas. Despairing of redress fi*om Wash- 
ington, the settlers from the free states appealed in their dis- 
tress to their friends at home, and sent Mr. Whitman, Rev. 
Mr. Nute, and later, John Brown, to make known to them 
their wrongs, and ask moral and material aid, especially arms 
to defend their rights, and reinforcements of brave settlers. 
Meetings were held, not only in the cities, but in the country 
towns, and, certainly in the latter, were well attended by 
earnest people who gave, a few from their wealth, but many 
from their poverty, large sums to help ** bleeding Kansas.'* 
In response to the petitions of the friends of Freedom, who 
urged the Legislature of Massachusetts to come to the rescue, 
a joint committee was appointed by the General Court to con- 
sider the petitions for a state appropriation of ten thousand 
dollars to protect the interests of the North and the rights 
of her citizens in Kansas, should they be again invaded by 
Southern marauders. John Brown addressed this committee 



NOTES 597 

in February, 1856. He made a clear and startling statement 
of the outrages he had witnessed and the brave struggles of 
the settlers, and told of the murder and imprisonment and 
maltreatment of his sons, seven of whom were in Kansas 
with him during the struggle.^ 

Mr. Emerson always attended the meetings in aid of Kansas 
in Concord, gave liberally to the cause, and spoke there and 
elsewhere when called upon. 

Page 263 i note i, George Bancroft, the historian, said of 
the conclusion of this speech: — 

<* Emerson as clearly as any one, perhaps more clearly than 
any one at the time, saw the enormous dangers that were gather- 
ing over the Constitution. ... It would certainly be diffi- 
cult, perhaps impossible, to find any speech made in the same 
year that is marked with so much courage and foresight as this 
of Emerson. . . . Even after the inauguration of Lincoln 
several months passed away before his Secretary of State or 
he himself saw the future so clearly as Emerson had fore- 
shadowed it in 1856." 2 

^ See the report of this speech in Redpath's Life of Captain John Brown. 
Boston: Thayer & Eldridge, i860. 

^ "Review of Holmes's Life of Emerson," North American Re-vieiv, 
February, 1885. 



598 NOTES 



JOHN BROWN: SPEECH AT BOSTON 

Mr. F. B. Sanborn, in his Familiar Letters of Thoreau, 
says that he introduced John Brown to Thoreau in March, 
1857, and Thoreau introduced him to Emerson. This was at 
the time when Brown came on to awaken the people of Massa- 
chusetts to the outrages which the settlers and their families 
were suffering, and procure aid for them. His clear-cut face, 
smooth-shaven and bronzed, his firmly shut mouth and mild 
but steady blue eyes, gave him the appearance of the best type 
of old New England farmers; indeed he might well have 
passed for a rustic brother of Squire Hoar. Mr. Emerson was 
at once interested in him and the story of the gallant fight 
that the Free-State men in Kansas were making, though Brown 
was very modest about his own part and leadership. Indeed 
he claimed only to be a fellow worker and adviser. I think 
that soon after this time, on one of his visits to Concord, he 
stayed at Mr. Emerson's house; certainly he spent the evening 
there. The last time he came to Concord he was a changed 
man; all the pleasant look was gone. His gray hair, longer 
and brushed upright, his great gray beard and the sharpening 
of his features by exposure and rude experiences gave him 
a wild, fierce expression. His speech in the Town Hall was 
excited, and when he drew a huge sheath-knife from under his 
coat and showed it as a symbol of Missouri civilization, and 
last drew from his bosom a horse-chain and clanked it in air, 
telling that his son had been bound with this and led bare- 
headed under a burning sun beside their horses, by United 
States dragoons, and in the mania brought on by this inhuman 
treatment had worn the rusty chain bright, — the old man 



NOTES 599 

recalled the fierce Balfour of Burley in Scott's Old Mortality. 
It was a startling sight and sent a thrill through his hearers. 
Yet on earlier occasions his speech had been really more effect- 
ive, when a quiet farmer of mature years, evidently self-con- 
tained, intelligent, truthful and humane, simply told in New 
England towns what was going on in Kansas, the outrages 
committed upon the setders, the violation of their elementary 
rights under the Constitution, — and all this connived at by 
the general government. He opened the eyes of his hearers, 
even against their wills, to the alarming pass into which the 
slave power had brought the affairs of the country. 

But now wrong and outrage, not only on others but ter- 
ribly suffered in his own family, had made Brown feel that 
not he but ** Slavery was an outlaw ** against which he ** held 
a commission direct from God Almighty '* to act. A friend 
quoted him as having said, *' The loss of my family and the 
troubles in Kansas have shattered my constitution, and I am 
nothing to the world but to defend the right, and that, by 
God's help, I have done and will do.*' 

The people were not ready to follow him in revolutionary 
measures, but when on his own responsibility he had precipi- 
tated the inevitable conflict by breaking with a government, 
then so unrighteous, and offered his life as a sacrifice for 
humanity, they could not but do homage to him as a hero, who 
was technically a traitor. He had cut the Gordian knot which 
they had suffered to be tied tighter. 

Of course Mr. Emerson had known nothing of John Brown's 
plan for a raid into the slave states. It was the motive and 
courage he honored, not the means. He wrote: " I wish 
we should have health enough to know virtue when we see it, 
and not cry with the fools and the newspapers, * Madman ! ' 
when a hero passes. ' ' 



6oo NOTES 

On the first day of November, John Brown had been sen- 
tenced to death. This meeting in Boston, to give aid to his 
family, was held on the eighteenth, just two weeks before his 
execution. 

The verses which serve as motto are from Mr. Edmund 
Clarence Stedman's poem written at the time, which Mr. 
Emerson used to read aloud to his family and friends with 
much pleasure. 

Page 26gy note i. ** This court acknowledges, I suppose, 
the validity of the Law of God. I see a book kissed here 
which I suppose to be the Bible, or, at least, the New Testa- 
ment. That teaches me that all things * whatsoever I would 
that men should do unto me, I should do even so to them.' 
It teaches me further to ' remember them which . are in bonds 
as bound with them. ' I endeavored to act up to that instruc- 
tion. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any 
respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have 
done, as I have always freely admitted that I have done, in 
behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, 
if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the 
furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further 
with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions 
in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, 
cruel and unjust enactments — I submit: so let it be done.'* 
From the Speech of John Brown to the Court. 

Page 2J0, note i. Among the sheets of the lecture 
" Courage" is one which seems to have been used at that 
time: — 

*' Governor Wise and Mr. Mason no doubt have some 
right to their places. It is some superiority of working brain 
that put them there, and the aristocrats in every society. But 



NOTES 60 1 

when they come to deal with Brown, they find that he speaks 
their own speech, — has whatever courage and directness they 
have, and a great deal more of the same; so that they feel 
themselves timorous little fellows in his hand; he outsees, out- 
thinks, outacts them, and they are forced to shuffle and stam- 
mer in their turn. 

" They painfiilly feel this, that he is their governor and supe- 
rior, and the only alternative is to kneel to him if they are 
truly noble, or else (if they wish to keep their places), to 
put this fact which they know, out of sight of other people, 
as fast as they can. Quick, drums and trumpets strike up! 
Quick, judges and juries, silence him, by sentence and execu- 
tion of sentence, and hide in the ground this alarming fact. 
For, if everything comes to its right place, he goes up, and 
we down.*' 

Page 2'jii note i. Commodore Hiram Paulding, in 1857, 
had broken up Walker's filibustering expedition at Nicaragua. 
The arrest of Walker on foreign soil the government did not 
think it wise wholly to approve. 

Page 2y2y note i. The allusion is to the trials of the fugi- 
tives Shadrach, Sims and Burns in Boston. The story of these 
humiliations is told in full and in a most interesting manner in 
the diary of Richard H. Dana,^ whose zeal in the cause of 
these poor men did him great honor. 

During the trial of Sims, a chain was put up, as a barrier 
against the crowd, around the United States Court- House, and 

* Richard Henry Dana ; a Biography. By Charles Francis Adams. 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890. In chapter viii. of this book is a very 
remarkable account of John Brown and his family at their home at North 
Elba in 1849, when Mr. Dana and a friend, lost in the Adirondac woods, 
chanced to come out upon the Brown clearing and were kindly received and 
aided. 



6o2 NOTES 

the stooping of the judges to creep under this chain in order to 
enter the court-house was considered symbolic of their abject 
attitude towards the aggressive slave power. 



JOHN BROWN; SPEECH AT SALEM 

The second of December, on which day John Brown was 
executed at Charlestown, Virginia, was bright in that State, 
but in New England was of a strange sultriness with a wind 
from the south and a lowering sky. At noon, the hour ap- 
pointed for his death, in Concord (as in many New England 
towns) the men and women who honored his character and 
motives gathered and made solemn observance of a day and 
event which seemed laden with omens. There was a prayer, 
■I think offered by the Rev. Edmund Sears of Wayland,^ Mr. 
Emerson read William Allingham's beautiful poem "The 
Touchstone ' * which is used as the motto to this speech, 
Thoreau read with sad bitterness Sir Walter Raleigh's " The 
Soule's Errand." Hon. John S. Keyes read some appropriate 
verses from Aytoun*s *« Execution of Montrose" and Mr. 
Sanborn a poem which he had written for the occasion. 

Page 2yg, note i. Here, as often in Mr. Emerson's speech 

^ While waiting for the services to begin, Mr. Sears wrote some verses. 
The following lines, which Mrs. Emerson saw him write, were a prophecy 
literally fulfilled within three years by the Union armies singing the John 
Brown song: — 

** But not a pit six feet by two 
Can hold a man like thee ; 
John Brown shall tramp the shaking earth 
From Blue Ridge to the sea," 



NOTES 603 

and writing, is shown his respect for the old religion of New 
England and its effect on the thought and character of her 
people. As Lowell said of them in his Concord Ode in 
1875: — 

"And yet the enduring half they chose. 
Whose choice decides a man life's slave or king. 
The invisible things of God before the seen and known.*' 

Page 2'/g, note 2, I well remember the evening, in my 
school-boy days, when John Brown, in my father's house, told 
of his experiences as a sheep-farmer, and his eye for animals 
and power over them. He said he knew at once a strange 
sheep in his flock of many hundred, and that he could always 
make a dog or cat so uncomfortable as to wish to leave the 
room, simply by fixing his eyes on it. 

Page 281, note i. *' Heroism feels and never reasons, and 
therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, 
different religion and greater intellectual activity would have 
modified or even reversed the particular action, yet, for the 
hero, that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to 
the censure of philosophers and divines." — "Heroism," 
Essays, First Series. 

" I can leave to God the time and means of my death, for 
I beheve now that the sealing of my testimony before God 
and man with my blood will do far more to further the cause 
to which I have earnestly devoted myself than anythmg else 
I have done in my life.** — Letter of John Brown to a friend. 



6o4 NOTES 



THEODORE PARKER 

Theodore Parker, worn by his great work in defence of 
liberal religion and in every cause of suffering humanity, had 
succumbed to disease and died in Florence in May, i860, 
not quite fifty years of age. Born in the neighbor town of 
Lexington when Emerson was seven years old, they had been 
friends probably from the time when the latter, soon after set- 
tling in Concord, preached for the society at East Lexington, 
from 1836 for two years. Parker was, during this period, 
studying divinity, and was settled as pastor of the West Rox- 
bury church in 1837. In that year he is mentioned by Mr. 
Alcott as a member of the Transcendental Club and attending 
its meetings in Boston. When, in June, 1838, Mr. Emerson 
fluttered the conservative and the timid by his Divinity School 
Address, the young Parker went home and wrote, "It was 
the most inspiring strain I ever listened to. . . . My soul is 
roused, and this week I shall write the long-meditated ser- 
mons on the state of the church and the duties of these 
times.** 

Mr. Parker was one of those who attended the gathering 
in Boston which gave birth to the Dialy to which he was a 
strong contributor. Three years after its death, he, with the 
help of Mr. James Elliot Cabot and Mr. Emerson, founded 
the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, vigorous though short- 
lived, of which he was the editor. Parker frequently visited 
Emerson, and the two, unlike in their method, worked best 
apart in the same great causes. Rev. William Gannett says, 
** What Emerson uttered without plot or plan, Theodore 



NOTES 605 

Parker elaborated to a system. Parker was the Paul of tran- 
scendentalism.'* 

Mr. Edwin D. Mead, in his chapter on Emerson and 
Theodore Parker/ gives the following pleasant anecdote: — 

"At one of Emerson's lectures in Boston, when the storm 
against Parker was fiercest, a lecture at which a score of the 
religious and literary leaders of the city were present, Emerson, 
as he laid his manuscript upon the desk and looked over the 
audience, after his wont, observed Parker; and immediately 
he stepped from the platform to the seat near the front where 
Parker sat, grasping his hand and standing for a moment's 
conversation with him. It was not ostentation, and it was 
not patronage : it was admiring friendship, — and that fortifica- 
tion and stimulus Parker in those times never failed to feel. 
It was Emerson who fed his lamp, he said; and Emerson said 
that, be the lamp fed as it might, it was Parker whom the 
time to come would have to thank for finding the light burn- 
ing/' 

Parker dedicated to Emerson his Ten Sermons on Religion. 
In acknowledging this tribute, Mr. Emerson thus paid tribute 
to Parker' s brave service : — 

** We shall all thank the right soldier whom God gave 
strength to fight for him the battle of the day. ' * 

When Mr. Parker's faiUng forces made it necessary for him 
to drop his arduous work and go abroad for rest, Mr. Emer- 
son was frequently called to take his place in the Music Hall 
on Sundays. I think that this was the only pulpit he went 
into to conduct Sunday services after 1838. 

It is told that Parker, sitting, on Sunday morning, on the 
deck of the vessel that was bearing him away, never to return, 

^ In the very interesting work The Influence of Emenon^ published in 
Boston in 1903, by the American Unitarian Association. 



6o6 NOTES 

smiled and said: <* Emerson is preaching at Music Hall to- 
day." 

Page 286, note I, Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal: — 

** The Due de Brancas said, * Why need I read the Encyclo- 
pedic ? Rivarol visits me. * I may well say it of Theodore 
Parker." 

Page 2go, note i. Richard H. Dana wrote in his diary, 
November 3, 1853: — 

"It is now ten days since Webster's death. . . . Strange 
that the best commendation that has appeared yet, the most 
touching, elevated, meaning eulogy, with all its censure, should 
have come from Theodore Parker! Were I Daniel Webster, 
I would not have that sermon destroyed for all that had been 
said in my favor as yet.'* ' 

Page 2gj, note i. I copy from Mr. Emerson's journal at 
the time of Mr. Parker's death these sentences which precede 
some of those included in this address: — 

" Theodore Parker has filled up all his years and days and 
hours. A son of the energy of New England; restless, eager, 
manly, brave, early old, contumacious, clever. I can well 
praise him at a spectator's distance, for our minds and methods 
were unlike, — few people more unlike. All the virtues are 
solitaires. Each man is related to persons who are not related 
to each other, and I saw with pleasure that men whom I 
could not approach, were drawn through him to the admu^a- 
tion of that which I admire." 



NOTES 607 



AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 

On January 31, 1862, Mr. Emerson lectured at the Smith- 
sonian Institution in Washington on American Civilization. 
Just after the outbreak of war in the April preceding, he had 
given a lecture, in a course in Boston on Life and Literature, 
which he called *' Civilization at a Pinch," the title suggest- 
ing how it had been modified by the crisis which had suddenly 
come to pass. In the course of the year the flocking of slaves 
to the Union camps, and the opening vista of a long and bitter 
struggle, with slavery now acknowledged as its root, had 
brought the question of Emancipation as a war-measure to the 
front. Of course Mr. Emerson saw hope in this situation of 
affairs, and when he went to Washington with the chance 
of being heard by men in power there, he prepared himself 
to urge the measure, as well on grounds of policy as of right. 
So the Boston lecture was much expanded to deal with the 
need of the hour. There is no evidence that President Lincoln 
heard it; it is probable that he did not; nor is it true that Mr. 
Emerson had a long and earnest conversation with him on the 
subject next day, both of which assertions have been made in 
print. Mr. Emerson made an unusual record in his journal of 
the incidents of his stay in Washington, and though he tells 
of his introduction to Mr. Lincoln and a short chat with him, 
evidendy there was little opportunity for serious conversation. 
The President's secretaries had, in 1886, no memory of his 
having attended the lecture, and the Washington papers do 
not mention his presence there. The following notice of the 
lecture, however, appeared in one of the local papers: ** The 



6o8 NOTES 

audience received it, as they have the other anti-slavery lectures 
of the course, with unbounded enthusiasm. It was in many 
respects a wonderful lecture, and those who have often heard 
Mr. Emerson said that he seemed inspired through nearly the 
whole of it, especially the part referring to slavery and the 
war,** 

A gentleman in Washington, who took the trouble to look 
up the question as to whether Mr. Lincoln and other high 
officials heard it, says that Mr. Lincoln could hardly have 
attended lectures then: — 

** He was very busy at the time, Stanton the new war 
secretary having just come in, and storming Hke a fury at the 
business of his department. The great operations of the war 
for the time overshadowed all the other events. ... It is 
worth remarking that Mr. Emerson in this lecture clearly fore- 
shadowed the policy of Emancipation some six or eight months 
in advance of Mr. Lincoln. He saw the logic of events lead- 
ing up to a crisis in our affairs, to ' emancipation as a platform 
with compensation to the loyal owners * (his words as reported 
in the Star^, The notice states that the lecture was very fiiUy 
attended.** 

Very possibly it may be with regard to this address that we 
have the interesting account given of the effect of Mr. Emer- 
son* s speaking on a well-known English author. Dr. Garnett, 
in his Life of Emerson y says: — 

**A shrewd judge, Anthony Trollope, was particularly 
struck with the note of sincerity in Emerson when he heard 
him address a large meeting during the Civil War. Not only 
was the speaker terse, perspicuous, and practical to a degree 
amazing to Mr. Trollope* s preconceived notions, but he com- 
manded his hearers* respect by the frankness of his dealing 
with them. « You make much of the American eagle,* he 



NOTES 609 

said, * you do well. But beware of the American peacock. * 
When shortly afterwards Mr. Trollope heard the consum- 
mate rhetorician, he discerned at once that 

oratory was an end with him, instead of, as with Emerson, a 
means. He was neither bold nor honest, as Emerson had 
been, and the people knew that while pretending to lead 
them he was led by them." 

Mr. Emerson revised the lecture and printed it in the At- 
lantic Monthly for April, 1862. It was afterwards separated 
into the essay ** Civilization," treating of the general and per- 
manent aspects of the subject (printed in Society and Solitude'), 
and this urgent appeal for the instant need. 

The few lines inspired by the Flag are from one of the 
verse-books. 

Page 2g8y note i. Mr. Emerson himself was by no means 
free from pecuniary anxieties and cares in those days. 

Journal, 1862. ** Poverty, sickness, a lawsuit, even bad, 
dark weather, spoil a great many days of the scholar's year, 
hinder him of the frolic freedom necessary to spontaneous flow 
of thought." 

Page JOO, note i. This was during the days of apparent 
inaction when, after the first reverses or minor successes of 
the raw Northern armies, the magnitude of the task before 
them and the energy of their opponents was realized, and 
recruiting, fortification, organization was going on in earnest 
in preparation for the spring campaign. General Scott had re- 
signed; General McClellan was doing his admirable work of 
creating a fit army, and Secretary Cameron had been succeeded 
by the energetic and impatient Stanton. But the government 
was still very shy of meddling with slavery for fear of disaf- 
fecting the War Democrats and especially the Border States. 



6io NOTES 

Page 307, note i, A short time before this address was 
delivered Mr. Moncure D. Conway (a young Virginian, who, 
for conscience' sake, had left his charge as a Methodist preacher 
and had abandoned his inheritance in slaves, losing in so doing 
the good will of his parents, and become a Unitarian minister 
and an abolitionist) had read in Concord an admirable and 
eloquent lecture called ** The Rejected Stone." This stone, 
slighted by the founders, although they knew it to be a source 
of danger, had now "become the head of the corner," and 
its continuance in the national structure threatened its stabihty. 
Mr. Emerson had been much struck with the excellence and 
cogency of Mr. Conway's arguments, based on his knowledge 
of Southern economics and character, and in this lecture made 
free use of them. 

Page J08, note i. Mason and Slidell, the emissaries 
sent by the Confederacy to excite sympathy in its cause in 
Europe, had been taken off an English vessel at the Bermudas 
by Commodore Wilkes, and were confined in Fort Warren in 
Boston Harbor. President Lincoln's action in surrendering 
them at England's demand had been a surprise to the country, 
but was well received. 

Page jop, note 7. From the Veeshnoo Sarma. 

Page jog, note 2. See in the address on Theodore Parker 
the passage commending him for insisting " that the essence 
of Christianity is its practical morals; it is there for use or 
nothing," etc. 

Page Jii, note i. In the agitation concerning the aboli- 
tion of slavery in the British colonies, gradual emancipation was 
at first planned, as more reasonable and politic, but, in the end, 
not only the reformers but the planters came in most cases to 
see that immediate emancipation was wiser. 



NOTES 6ii 



THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

On the 2 2d of September, President Lincoln at last spoke 
the word so long earnestly desired by the friends of Freedom 
and the victims of slavery, abolishing slavery on the first day 
of the coming year in those states which should then be in 
rebellion against the United States. 

At a meeting held in Boston in honor of this auspicious 
utterance, Mr. Emerson spoke, v;^ith others. 

The address was printed in its present form in the Atlantic 
Monthly for November, 1862. 

P^Z^ 316, note J, It may be interesting in this connec- 
tion to recall the quiet joy with which Mr. Emerson in his 
poem "The Adirondacs'* celebrates man's victory over 
matter, and its promise to human brotherhood, when the 
Atlantic Cable was supposed to be a success in 1858. 

Page J 20 y note i. Milton, ** Comus." 

Page J2I, note i. It is pleasant to contrast this passage 
with the tone of sad humiliation which prevails in the address 
on the Fugitive Slave Law given in Concord in 1 8 5 1 . 

Page 324^ note i. See the insulting recognition of this 
disgracefiil attitude of the North by John Randolph, quoted 
by Mr. Emerson in his speech on the Fugitive Slave Law in 
Concord in 1 8 5 i . 

Page 326, note i. Shakspeare, Sonnet cvii. 

Page 326, note 2. The tragedy of the negro is tenderly 
told in the poem ** Voluntaries," which was written just 



6i2 NOTES 

after they had gallantly stood the test of battle in the desperate 
attack on Fort Wagner. 

On the first day of the year 1863, when Emancipation be- 
came a fact throughout the United States, a joyful meeting was 
held in Boston, and there Mr. Emerson read his ** Boston 
Hymn.'' 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

In the year 1865, the people of Concord gathered on the 
Nineteenth of April, as had been their wont for ninety years, 
but this time not to celebrate the grasping by the town of its 
great opportunity for freedom and fame. The people came 
together in the old meeting-house to mourn for their wise 
and good Chief Magistrate, murdered when he had triumph- 
antly finished the great work which fell to his lot. Mr. 
Emerson, with others of his townsmen, spoke. 

Page 331 y note i. On the occasion of his visit to Wash- 
ington in January, 1862, Mr. Emerson had been taken to the 
White House by Mr. Sumner and introduced to the President. 
Mr. Lincoln's first remark was, ** Mr. Emerson, I once 
heard you say in a lecture that a Kentuckian seems to say by 
his air and manners, * Here am I; if you don't Hke me, the 
worse for you.' " 

The interview with Mr. Lincoln was necessarily short, but 
he left an agreeable impression on Mr. Emerson's mind. The 
full account of this visit is printed in the Atlantic Monthly for 
July, 1904, and will be included among the selections from 
the journals which will be later published. 



NOTES 613 

Page Jj2y note l. Mr. Emerson's poem, ** The Visit,'* 
shows how terrible the devastation of the day of a public 
man would have seemed to him. 

P^g^ 33^i ^ote I. The brave retraction by Thomas 
Taylor of the hostile ridicule which Punch had poured on 
Lincoln in earlier days contained these verses: — 

" Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew. 
Between the mourners at his head and feet. 
Say, scurrile jester, is there room {ox you? 

«* Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer. 
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen; — 
To make me own this hind of princes peer. 
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men." 

The whole poem is included in Mr. Emerson's collection 
Parnassus, 

Page 33'Ji note i. This thought is rendered more fully in 
the poem *« Spiritual Laws," and in the lines in "Wor- 
ship," — 

This is he men miscall Fate, 
Threading dark ways, arriving late. 
But ever coming in time to crown 
The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down. 

P^g^ 338i note i. The follovdng letter was written by 
Mr. Emerson in November, 1863, to his friend, Mr. George 
P. Bradford, who, as Mr. Cabot says, came nearer to being 
a ** crony " than any of the others: — 

Concord. 

Dear George, — I hope you do not need to be reminded 



6i4 NOTES 

that we rely on you at 2 o'clock on Thanksgiving Day. 
Bring all the climate and all the memories of Newport with 
you. Mr. Lincoln in fixing this day has in some sort bound 
himself to furnish good news and victories for it. If not, we 
must comfort each other with the good which already is, and 
with that which must be. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. W, Emerson. 

A year later, he wrote to the same friend: — 

" I give you joy of the Election. Seldom in history was so 
much staked on a popular vote — I suppose never in history. 

** One hears everywhere anecdotes of late, very late, remorse 
overtaking the hardened sinners and just saving them from final 
reprobation.'* 

Journal, 1864-65. "Why talk of President Lincoln's 
equality of manners to the elegant or titled men with whom 
Everett or others saw him ? A sincerely upright and intelli- 
gent man as he was, placed in the chair, has no need to 
think of his manners or appearance. His work day by day 
educates him rapidly and to the best. He exerts the enormous 
power of this continent in every hour, in every conversation, 
in every act; — thinks and decides under this pressure, forced 
to see the vast and various bearings of the measures he adopts: 
he cannot palter, he cannot but carry a grace beyond his own, 
a dignity, by means of what he drops, e. g. , all pretension 
and trick, and arrives, of course, at a simplicity, which is the 
perfection of manners. * * 



NOTES 615 



HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH 

It was a proud and sad, and yet a joyful day, when Har- 
vard welcomed back those of her sons who had survived the 
war. All who could come were there, from boys to middle- 
aged men, from private soldier to general, some strong and 
brown, and others worn and sick and maimed, but all on that 
day proud and happy. The names of the ninety-three of Har- 
vard's sons who had fallen in the war were inscribed on six 
tablets and placed where all could see. 

In the church, where then the college exercises were held, 
the venerable ex-president. Dr. Walker, read the Scriptures, 
Rev. Phillips Brooks offered prayer, a hymn by Robert Lowell 
was sung, and the address was made by the Rev. George 
Putnam. In the afternoon the alumni, civic and military, with 
their guests, were marshalled by Colonel Henry Lee into a 
great pavilion behind Harvard Hall, where they dined. Hon. 
Charles G. Loring presided ; Governor Andrew, General 
Meade, General Devens and other distinguished soldiers spoke, 
and poems by Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe were 
read. The president of the day called on Mr. Emerson as 
representative of the poets and scholars whose thoughts had 
been an inspiration to Harvard's sons in the field. 

Page 344i note i. This was the mother of Robert Gould 
Shaw, who lost his life a few months later, leading his dusky 
soldiers up the slopes of Fort Wagner. It was in his honor that 
Mr. Emerson wrote in the ** Voluntaries," — 



6i6 NOTES 

Stainless soldier on the walls. 
Knowing this, — and knows no more, — 
Whoever fights, whoever falls. 
Justice conquers evermore. 
Justice after as before, — 
And he who battles on her side, 
God, though he were ten times slain. 
Crowns him victor glorified, 
Victor over death and pain. 

P^g^ 345 > note I. 

** O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more! 

What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it. 
Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? 

What were our Hves without thee ? 

What all our lives to save thee ? 

We reck not what we gave thee; 

We will not dare to doubt thee. 
But ask whatever else, and we will dare! " 

Lowell, ''Commemoration Ode." 



NOTES 617 



ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SOL- 
DIERS' MONUMENT IN CONCORD 

In 1836, the *' Battle Monument *' to commemorate "the 
First organized Resistance to British Aggression ' * had been 
erected ** in Gratitude to God and Love of Freedom'* on 
" the spot where the first of the Enemy fell in the War which 
gave Independence to the United States." Thirty-three years 
later, on the Nineteenth day of April, with its threefold patri- 
otic memories for Concord,^ the people gathered on the village 
common to see their new memorial to valor. The inscription 
on one of its bronze tablets declared that 

THE TOWN OF CONCORD 

BUILDS THIS MONUMENT 
IN HONOR OF 

THE BRAVE MEN 

WHOSE NAMES IT BEARS: 

AND RECORDS 

WITH GRATEFUL PRIDE 

THAT THEY FOUND HERE 

A BIRTHPLACE, HOME OR GRAVE. 

The inscription on the other tablet is the single sentence, — 

THEY DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY 
IN THE WAR OF THE REBELUGN 

with the forty-four names. 

Hon. John S. Keyes as President of the Day opened the 

* See note 3 to page 63 of the " Historical Discourse." 



6i8 NOTES 

ceremonies with a short address. The Rev. Grindall Rey- 
nolds made the prayer. An Ode written by Mr. George B. 
Bartlett was sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. Hon. 
Ebenezer Rock wood Hoar, the Chairman of the Monument 
Committee, read the Report, in itself an eloquent and moving 
speech. This was followed by Mr. Emerson's Address. 
Mr. F. B. Sanborn contributed a Poem, and afterwards short 
speeches were made by Senator George S. Boutwell, William 
Schouler, the efficient Adjutant- General of the State, and by 
Colonels Parker and Marsh respectively of the Thirty-second 
and Forty-seventh regiments of Massachusetts Volunteers, in 
which the Concord companies had served. The exercises were 
concluded by the reading of a poem by Mr. Sampson Mason, 
an aged citizen of the town. 

It was a beautiful spring day. The throng was too large 
for the town hall, so, partly sheltered from the afternoon sun 
by the town elm, thickening with its brown buds, they gath- 
ered around the town-house steps, which served as platform for 
the speakers. 

Page 3^1 1 note i. Compare, in the Poems, the lines in 
<* The Problem '* on the adoption by Nature of man's devo- 
tional structures. 
Page 3S 2 > note I. 

Great men in the Senate sate. 
Sage and hero, side by side. 
Building for their sons the State, 
Which they shall rule with pride. 
They forbore to break the chain 
Which bound the dusky tribe. 
Checked by the owners' fierce disdain. 
Lured by ** Union " as the bribe. 



NOTES 619 

Destiny sat by, and said, 
* Pang for pang your seed shall pay. 
Hide in false peace your coward head, 
I bring round the harvest day.* 

P^gs 353, note I. Wordsworth's Sonnet, No. xiv., in 
** Poems dedicated to National Independence," part ii. 

Page 3SS* ^°^^ ^' ^^' Emerson had in mind the aston- 
ishing fertility of resource in difficulties shown by the Eighth 
Massachusetts Regiment in the march from Annapolis to Wash- 
ington, as told by Major Theodore Winthrop in ** New York 
Seventh Regiment. Our march to Washington** (^Atlantic 
Monthly, June, 1 8 6 1 ) . See * * Resources, ' ' Letters and Social 
Aims, p. 143. 

Judge Hoar in his report on this occasion said, **Two 
names [on the tablet] recall the unutterable horrors of Ander- 
sonville, and will never suffer us to forget that our armies con- 
quered barbarism as well as treason.** 

Page 3^6, note I. Between 1856 and 1859 John Brown 
and other Free-State men, Mr. Whitman, Mr. Nute and 
Preacher Stewart, had told the sad story of Kansas to the 
Concord people and received important aid. 

Page 3^89 note i. This was Captain Charles E. Bowers, 
a shoemaker, and Mr. Emerson's next neighbor, much re- 
spected by him, whose forcible speaking at anti-slavery and 
Kansas aid meetings he often praised. When the war came, 
Mr. Bowers, though father of a large family, and near the 
age-limit of service, volunteered as a private in the first com- 
pany, went again as an officer in the Thirty-second Massa- 
chusetts Regiment, and served with credit in the Army of the 
Potomac until discharged for disability. 

Page 3^8 y note 2. George L. Prescott, a lumber dealer 



620 NOTES 

and farmer, later Colonel of the Thirty-second Regiment, 
U. S. V. He was of the same stock as Colonel William 
Prescott, the hero of Bunker Hill. 

Judge Hoar said of him, " An only son, an only brother, 
a husband and a father, with no sufficient provision made for 
his wife and children, he had everything to make life dear and 
desirable, and to require others to hesitate for him, but he did 
not hesitate himself.'* 

Page 361 y note i. Blaise de Montluc, a Gascon officer of 
remarkable valor, skill and fidelity, under Francis I. and sev- 
eral succeeding kings of France. 

Page J 6^, note i. It was well said by Judge Hoar: *' His 
instinctive sympathies taught him from the outset, what many 
higher in command were so slow and so late to learn, that it 
is the first duty of an officer to take care of his men as much 
as to lead them. His character developed new and larger 
proportions, with new duties and larger responsibilities." 

Page 366, note i. The Buttricks were among the original 
settlers of Concord, and the family has given good account of 
itself for nearly two hundred and seventy years, and still owns 
the farm on the hill whence Major John led the yeomen of 
Middlesex down to force the passage of the North Bridge. 
Seven representatives of that family of sturdy democrats volun- 
teered at the beginning of the War of the Rebellion. Two 
were discharged as physically unfit, but the others served in 
army or navy with credit, and two of them lost their lives in 
the service. Alden Buttrick had fought the Border Ruffians in 
Kansas. Humphrey, a mason by trade, but a mighty hunter, 
left his wife and little children at the first call, and was first ser- 
geant of Prescott' s company. Mr. Emerson omits to state 
that he was commissioned lieutenant in the Forty-seventh 
Regiment the following year. His service, especially as 



NOTES 621 

captain in the Fifty -ninth Regiment, was arduous and highly- 
creditable. 

Page j68i note i. Edward O. Shepard, who had been 
master of the Concord High School, afterwards a successful 
lawyer, had an excellent war record, and rose to be lieu- 
tenant-colonel of the Thirty -second Regiment. 

George Lauriat left the gold-beater's shop of Ephraim W. 
Bull (the producer of the Concord Grape) to go to the war 
in Concord's first company. Modest and brave, he became an 
excellent officer and returned captain and brevet-major of the 
Thirty-second Regiment. 

Page j68y note 2. Francis Buttrick, younger brother of 
Humphrey, a handsome and attractive youth, had lived at 
Mr. Emerson's home to carry on the farm for him. 

Page 31Sy ^^^^ ^' These three were Asa, John and Sam- 
uel Melvin. Asa died of wounds received before Petersburg; 
both his brothers of sickness, Samuel after long sujffering in the 
prison-pen at Andersonville. They came of an old family of 
hunter-farmers in Concord. Close by the wall next the street 
of the Old Hill Burying Ground is the stone in memory of 
one of their race, whose ** Martial Genius early engaged him 
in his Country's cause under command of the valiant Captain 
Lovel in that hazardous Enterprise where our hero, his Com- 
mander, with many brave and valiant Men bled and died." 

Page J/p, note i. The writer of this letter, a quiet, hand- 
some school-boy the year before the war broke out, lived just 
across the brook behind Mr. Emerson's house. He was an 
excellent soldier in the Thirty-second Regiment, and reen- 
listed as a veteran in 1864. 



622 NOTES 



EDITORS' ADDRESS, MASSACHUSETTS 
QUARTERLY REVIEW 

Mr. Cabot, in his Memoir, says that just before Mr. 
Emerson sailed for Europe in 1847, Theodore Parker, Dr. 
S. G. Howe and others (Mr. Cabot was one of these) met 
to consider whether there could not be ** a new quarterly 
review which should be more alive than was the North Ameri- 
can to the questions of the day. ' ' Charles Sumner and Thoreau 
are mentioned as having been present. Colonel Higginson 
says that Mr. Parker wished it to be ** the Dial with a 
beard." It was decided that the undertaking should be made. 
Mr. Parker wished Mr. Emerson to be editor, but he de- 
clined. A committee was chosen — Emerson, Parker and 
Howe — to draft a manifesto to the pubHc. Mr. Emerson 
wrote the paper here printed, but when the first number of 
the Review came to him in England, was annoyed at finding 
his name set down as one of the editors. I think that the only 
paper he ever wrote for it, beyond the " Address to the Pub- 
lic,'* was a notice of '* Some Oxford Poetry,'* — the recently 
published poems of John Sterling and Arthur Hugh Clough. 

Theodore Parker was the real editor. During its three years 
of life the Massachusetts garter ly — now hard to obtain — 
was a brave, independent and patriotic magazine, and, like the 
Dia/, gives the advancing thought of the time in literary and 
social matters, and also in religion and polidcs. 

Page ^84, note i. Plutarch tells that Cineas, the wise 
counsellor of Pyrrhus, king of the Epirots, asked his monarch 
when he set forth to conquer Rome what he should do after- 



NOTES 623 

wards. Pyrrhus said he could then become master of Sicily. 
" And then ? " asked Cineas. The king told of further dreams 
of conquest of Carthage and Libya. ** But when we have 
conquered all that, what are we to do then ? '* <* Why then, 
my friend," said Pyrrhus, laughing, ** we will take our ease, 
and drink and be merry." Cineas, having brought him thus 
far, replied, *« And what hinders us from drinking and taking 
our ease now, when we have already those things in our hands 
at which we propose to arrive through seas of blood, through 
infinite toils and dangers, innumerable calamities which we 
must both cause and suffer ? " 

Page 386, note i. " To live without duties is obscene." 
— '* Aristocracy," Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 

Page jS^y note i. This was shortly after the annexation 
of Texas, and during the successful progress of the Mexican 
War. The slave power, although awakening opposition by its 
insatiable demands, was still on the increase. Charles Sumner, 
though a rising statesman, had not yet entered Congress. 

Page Jc5*p, note 2. 

For Destiny never swerves. 
Nor yields to men the helm, 

"The World-Soul," Poems, 



ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 

On a beautiful day in May, 1852, Louis Kossuth, tlje 
exiled governor of Hungary, who had come to this country 
to solicit her to interfere in European politics on behalf of his 
oppressed people, visited the towns of Lexington and Con- 
cord, and spoke to a large assemblage in each place. 

Kossuth was met at the Lexington line by a cavalcade from 



624 NOTES 

Concord, who escorted him to the village, where he received 
a cordial welcome. The town hall was crowded with people. 
The Hon. John S. Keyes presided, and Mr. Emerson made 
the address of welcome. 

Kossuth, in his earnest appeal for American help, addressed 
Mr. Emerson personally in the following passages, after al- 
luding to Concord's part in the struggle for Freedom in 
1775: — 

"It is strange, indeed, how every incident of the present 
bears the mark of a deeper meaning around me. There is 
meaning in the very fact that it is you, sir, by whom the 
representative of Hungary's ill-fated struggle is so generously 
welcomed ... to the shrine of martyrs illumined by victory. 
You are wont to dive into the mysteries of truth and disclose 
mysteries of right to the eyes of men. Your honored name 
is Emerson; and Emerson was the name of a man who, a 
minister of the gospel, turned out with his people, on the 1 9th 
of April of eternal memory, when the alarm-bell first was rung. 
... I take hold of that augury, sir. ReHgion and Philo- 
sophy, you blessed twins, — upon you I rely with my hopes 
to America. Religion, the philosophy of the heart, will make 
the Americans generous; and philosophy, the religion of the 
mind, will make the Americans wise; and all that I claim is 
a generous wisdom and a wise generosity." 

Page jp8, note i. I am unable to find the source of these 
lines. 

Page jpp, note i. For the power of minorities, see "Pro- 
gress of Culture," Letters and Social Aims, pp. 216-219, 
and "Considerations by the Way," Conduct of Life , pp. 
248, 249. 



NOTES 625 



WOMAN 

Perhaps the pleasantest word Mr. Emerson ever spoke 
about women was what he said at the end of the war: 
** Everybody has been wrong in his guess except good women, 
who never despair of an ideal right." 

Mr. Emerson's habitual treatment of women showed his 
real feeling towards them. He held them to their ideal selves 
by his courtesy and honor. When they called him to come to 
their aid, he came. Men must not deny them any right that 
they desired; though he never felt that the finest women would 
care to assume political functions in the same way that men 
did. 

Mr. Cabot gives in his Memoir (p. 455) a letter which 
Mr. Emerson wrote, five years before this speech was made, 
to a lady who asked him to join in a call for a Woman's Suf- 
frage Convention. His distaste for the scheme clearly appears, 
and though perhaps felt in a less degree as time went on, never 
quite disappeared. At the end of the notes on this address 
is given the greater part of a short speech which he wrote 
many years later, but which he seems never to have deliv- 
ered. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson is reported in 
the Woman's Journal as having said at the New England 
Women's Club, May 16, 1903, that Mr. Cabot put into his 
Memoir what Mr. Emerson said in his early days, when he 
was opposed to woman's suffrage (the letter above alluded to), 
and ** left out all those warm and cordial sentences that he 
wrote later in regard to it, culminating in his assertion that, 
whatever might be said of it as an abstract question, all his 

XI 



626 NOTES 

measures would be carried sooner if women could vote.** This 
last assertion, though not in the Memoir, Mr. Cabot printed 
in its place in the present address, and the only other address 
on the subject which is known to exist, Mr. Cabot did not 
print probably because Mr. Emerson never delivered it. 

Page 406, note j. This passage from the original is omit- 
ted: — 

" A woman of genius said, * I will forgive you that you 
do so much, and you me that I do nothing.' " 

Page 411, note i. This sentence originally ended, *' And 
their convention should be holden in a sculpture-gallery.** 

Page 412, note i. From The Angel in the House, by 
Coventry Patmore. 

Page 41J, note i. Milton, Paradise Lost. 

Because of the high triumph of Humility, his favorite vir- 
tue, Mr. Emerson, though commonly impatient of sad stories, 
had always a love for the story of Griselda, as told by Chau- 
cer, alluded to below. In spite of its great length, he would 
not deny it a place in his collection Parnassus. 

Page 41 J y note 2. From "Love and Humility,** by 
Henry More (1614-87). 

Page 414, note i. These anecdotes followed in the origi- 
nal speech: — 

** « I use the Lord of the Kaaba; what is the Kaaba to 
me ? ' said Rabia. * I am so near to God that his word, 
*' Whoso nears me by a span, to him come I a mile,** is 
true for me.* A famed Mahometan theologian asked her, 
* How she had lifted herself to this degree of the love of God ? * 
She replied, * Hereby, that all things which I had found, I 
have lost in him.* The other said, * In what way or method 
hast thou known him ? * She replied, * O Hassan ! thou know- 



NOTES 627 

est him after a certain art and way, but I without art and 
way.* When once she was sick, three famed theologians 
came to her, Hassan Vasri, Malek and Balchi. Hassan said, 
* He is not upright in his prayer who does not endure the 
blows of his Lord.' Balchi said, * He is not upright in his 
prayer who does not rejoice in the blows of his Lord.' But 
Rabia, who in these words detected some trace of egoism, 
said, * He is not upright in his prayer, who, when he be- 
holds his Lord, forgets not that he is stricken. * ' * 

Page 413, note i. See *« Clubs,** in Society and Soli- 
tude, p. 243. 

Page 4iy, note i, ** The Princess '* is the poem alluded 
to. Mr. Emerson liked it, but used to say it was sad to hear 
it end with. Go home and mind your mending. 

Page 426, note z. The internal evidence shows that the 
short speech given below was written after the war. All that 
is important is here given. There were one or two para- 
graphs that essentially were the same as those of the 1855 
address. 

On the manuscript is written, apparently in Mr. Emerson's 
hand, in pencil, "Never read,** and evidently in his hand, 
the title, thus: — 

Discours Manque 

WOMAN 

I consider that the movement which unites us to-day is 
no whim, but an organic impulse, — a right and proper 
inquiry, — honoring to the age. And among the good signs 
of the times, this is of the best. 

The distinctions of the mind of Woman we all recognize; 
their affectionate, sympathetic, religious, oracular nature ; their 
swifter and finer perception; their taste, or love of order and 



628 NOTES 

beauty, influencing or creating manners. We commonly say, 
Man represents Intellect; and Woman, Love. Man looks for 
hard truth. Woman, with her affection for goodness, benefit. 
Hence they are religious. In all countries and creeds the tem- 
ples are filled by women, and they hold men to religious 
rites and moral duties. And in all countries the man — no 
matter how hardened a reprobate he is — likes well to have 
his wife a saint. It was no historic chance, but an instinct, 
which softened in the Middle Ages the terror of the supersti- 
tious, by gradually hfting their prayers to the Virgin Mary and 
so adopting the Mother of God as the efficient Intercessor, 
And now, when our religious traditions are so far outgrown 
as to require correction and reform, 'tis certain that nothing 
can be fixed and accepted which does not commend itself to 
Woman. 

I suppose women feel in relation to men as *t is said geniuses 
feel among energetic workers, that, though overlooked and 
thrust aside in the press, they cutsee all these noisy masters: 
and we, in the presence of sensible women, feel overlooked, 
judged, — and sentenced. 

They are better scholars than we at school, and the reason 
why they are not better than we twenty years later may be 
because men can turn their reading to account in the profes- 
sions, and women are excluded from the professions. 

These traits have always characterized women. We are a 
little vain of our women, as if we had invented them. I think 
we exaggerate the effect of Greek, Roman and even Oriental 
institutions on the character of woman. Superior women are 
rare anywhere, as superior men are. But the anecdotes of 
every country give like portraits of womanhood, and every 
country in its Roll of Honor has as many women as men. 
The high sentiment of women appears in the Hebrew, the 



NOTES 629 

Hindoo; in Greek women in Homer, in the tragedies, and 
Roman women in the histories. Their distinctive traits, grace, 
vivacity, and svu-er moral sentiment, their self-sacrifice, their 
courage and endurance, have in every nation found respect and 
admiration. 

Her gifts make woman the refiner and civilizer of her mate. 
Civilization is her work. Man is rude and bearish in colleges, 
in mines, in ships, because there is no woman. Let good 
women go passengers in the ship, and the manners at once are 
mended; in schools, in hospitals, in the prairie, in California, 
she brings the same reform. . . . 

Her activity in putting an end to Slavery; and in serving 
the hospitals of the Sanitary Commission in the war, and in 
the labors of the Freedman' s Bureau, have opened her eyes to 
larger rights and duties. She claims now her full rights of all 
kinds, — to education, to employment, to equal laws of pro- 
perty. Well, now in this country we are suffering much and 
fearing more from the abuse of the ballot and fi-om fraudulent 
and purchased votes. And now, at the moment when commit- 
tees are investigating and reporting the election frauds, woman 
asks for her vote. It is the remedy at the hour of need. She 
is to purify and civilize the voting, as she has the schools, the 
hospitals and the drawing-rooms. For, to grant her request, you 
must remove the polls from the tavern and rum-shop, and build 
noble edifices worthy of the State, whose halls shall afford her 
every security for deliberate and sovereign action. 

'Tis certainly no new thing to see women interest them- 
selves in politics. In England, in France, in Germany, Italy, 
we find women of influence and administrative capacity, — 
some Duchess of Marlborough, some Madame de Longueville, 
Madame Roland, — centres of political power and intrigue. 
. . . But we have ourselves seen the great political enter- 



630 NOTES 

prise of our times, the abolition of Slavery in America, under- 
taken by a society whose executive committee was composed 
of men and women, and which held together until this object 
was attained. And she may well exhibit the history of that as 
her voucher that she is entitled to demand power which she 
has shown she can use so well. 

'T is idle to refuse them a vote on the ground of incompetency. 
I wish our masculine voting were so good that we had any 
right to doubt their equal discretion. They could not easily 
give worse votes, I think, than we do. 



CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 
CEMETERY 

Within a quarter of a mile of Concord Common was a 
natural amphitheatre, carpeted in late summer with a purple 
bloom of wild grass, and girt by a horseshoe-shaped glacial 
moraine clothed with noble pines and oaks. It was part of 
Deacon Brown's farm, and reached by a lane, with a few 
houses on it, cut through a low part of the ridge of hills which 
sheltered the old town. When the Deacon died, the town 
laid out a new road to Bedford, cutting off this " Sleepy 
Hollow" (as the townspeople who enjoyed strolling there 
had named it) from the rest of the farm. Mr. John S. Keyes 
saw the fitness of the ground for a beautiful cemetery, and 
induced the town to buy it for that purpose; and as chairman 
of the committee, laid out the land. The people of the vil- 
lage — for Concord had nothing suburban about it then — 
gathered there one beautiful September afternoon to choose 
their resting-places and consecrate the ground. Mr. Emerson 



NOTES 631 

made the address on the slope just below the place where, 
beneath a great pine, the tree he loved best, he had chosen the 
spot for his own grave. 

Much of his essay on Immortality was originally a part of 
this discourse, and therefore that portion is omitted here, its 
place in the essay being indicated. 



ROBERT BURNS 

It is pleasant to be able to let Dr. Holmes, who was 
present at the Burns Festival, speak for himself and Lowell 
and Judge Hoar of Mr. Emerson's speech on that day. I 
have heard the Judge tell the story of his friend's success with 
the same delight. 

"On the 25th of January, 1859, Emerson attended the 
Burns Festival, held at the Parker House in Boston, on the 
Centennial Anniversary of the poet's birth. He spoke, after 
the dinner, to the great audience with such beauty and elo- 
quence that all who listened to him have remembered it as one 
of the most delightful addresses they ever heard. Among his 
hearers was Mr. Lowell, who says of it that * every word 
seemed to have just dropped down to him from the clouds.* 
Judge Hoar, who was another of his hearers, says that, though 
he has heard many of the chief orators of his time, he never 
witnessed such an effect of speech upon men. I was myself 
present on that occasion, and underwent the same fascination 
that these gentlemen and the varied audience before the speaker 
experienced. His words had a passion in them not usual in 
the calm, pure flow most natural to his uttered thoughts; 
white-hot iron we are familiar with, but white-hot silver is 



632 NOTES 

what we do not often look upon, and his inspiring address 
glowed like silver fresh from the cupel.** 

The strange part of all the accounts given by the hearers is 
that Mr. Emerson seemed to speak extempore, which can 
hardly have been so. 

No account of the Festival, or Mr. Emerson's part therein, 
appears in the journals, except a short page of praise of the 
felicitous anecdotes introduced by other after-dmner speakers. 

Page 440, note i. Here comes out that respect for labor 
which affected all Mr. Emerson's relations to the humblest 
people he met. In the Appendix to the Poems it appears in 
the verses beginning, — 

Said Saadi, When I stood before 
Hassan the camel-driver's door. 

Page 441, note I. Thomas Carlyle. 

Page 441, note 2. Mr. Emerson here recalls his childhood 
and that of his brothers, as in the passage in *' Domestic Life," 
in Society and Solitude, that has been often referred to in these 
notes. 

Page 443, note i. Among some stray lecture-sheets was 
the following on the scholar or poet: — 

*« Given the insight, and he will find as many beauties and 
heroes and strokes of genius close by him as Dante or Shak- 
speare beheld. It was in a cold moor farm, in a dingy country 
inn, that Burns found his fancy so sprightly. You find the 
times and places mean. Stretch a few threads over an ^olian 
harp, and put it in the window and listen to what it says of 
the times and of the heart of Nature. You shall not believe the 
miracle of Nature is less, the chemical power worn out. Watch 
the breaking morning, or the enchantments of the sunset." 



NOTES 633 



SHAKSPEARE 

The following notes on Shakspeare were written by Mr. 
Emerson for the celebration in Boston by the Saturday Club 
of the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the poet's birth. 

In Mr. Cabot's Memoir of Emerson, vol. ii., page 621, 
apropos of Mr. Emerson's avoidance of impromptu speech on 
public occasions, is this statement: — 

"I remember his getting up at a dinner of the Saturday 
Club on the Shakspeare anniversary in 1864, to which some 
guests had ^een invited, looking about him tranquilly for a 
minute or two, and then sitting down; serene and unabashed, 
but unable to say a word upon a subject so familiar to his 
thoughts from boyhood." 

Yet on the manuscript of this address Mr. Emerson noted 
that it was read at the Club's celebration on that occasion, 
and at the Revere House. (** Parker's" was the usual gather- 
ing-place of the Club.) The handwriting of this note shows 
that Mr. Emerson wrote it in his later years, so it is very 
possible that Mr. Cabot was right. Mr. Emerson perhaps 
forgot to bring his notes with him to the dinner, and so did 
not venture to speak. And the dinner may have been at 
"Parker's." 



634 NOTES 



ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT 

The Boston Society of Natural History celebrated the One 
Hundredth Anniversary of the birth of Humboldt. Dr. Rob- 
ert C. Waterston presided at the Music Hall, where Agassiz 
made the address. In the evening there was a reception in 
Horticultural Hall. The occasion was made memorable by 
the Society by the founding of a Humboldt and Agassiz scholar- 
ship in the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge. 

Poems by Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Howe were read. Pro- 
fessor E. J. Young and Dr. Charles T. Jackson gave reminis- 
cences of Humboldt; Colonel Higginson, the Rev. Dr. Hedge 
and others spoke. Mr. Emerson's remarks are taken from an 
abstract given in the account of the celebration published by 
the Society. 



WALTER SCOTT 

Although Mr. Emerson, in the period between 1838 
and 1848 especially, when considering the higher powers 
of poetry, spoke slightingly of Scott, — in the Dial papers 
as *« objective" and "the poet of society, of patrician and 
conventional Europe,'* or in English Traits as a writer of 
"a rhymed travellers' guide to Scotland," — he had always 
honor for the noble man, and affectionate remembrance 
for the poems as well as the novels. In the poem ** The 
Harp," when enumerating poets, he calls Scott " the delight 
of generous boys," but the generosus puer was his own 



NOTES 635 

delight; the hope of the generation lay in him, and his own 
best audience was made up of such. In the essay ** Illusions," 
ne says that the boy ** has no better friend than Scott, Shak- 
speare, Plutarch and Homer. The man lives to other objects, 
but who dare affirm that they are more real ? ' * In the essay 
*' Aristocracy," he names among the claims of a superior 
class, " Genius, the power to affect the Imagination," and 
presently speaks of ** those who think and paint and laugh 
and weep in their eloquent closets, and then convert the 
world into a huge whispering-gallery, to report the tale to all 
men and win smiles and tears from many generations," and 
gives Scott and Burns among the high company whom he 
instances. 

Mr. Emerson's children can testify how with regard to 
Scott he always was ready to become a boy again. As we 
walked in the woods, he would show us the cellar-holes of 
the Irish colony that came to Concord to build the railroad, 
and he named these deserted villages Derncleugh and Elian- 
go wan. The sight recalled Meg Merrilies' pathetic lament 
to the laird at the eviction of the gypsies, which he would 
then recite. "Alice Brand," the " Sair Field o* Harlaw," 
which old Elspeth sings to the children in The Antiquary, 
and ** Helvellyn " were again and again repeated to us with 
pleasure on both sides. With special affection in later years 
when we walked in Walden woods he would croon the lines 
from ** The Dymg Bard," — 

"Dinas Emlinn, lament, for the moment is nigh. 
When mute in the woodlands thine echoes shall die." 

Perhaps he had foreboding for his loved woods, beginning 
to be desecrated with rude city picnics, and since burned over 
repeatedly by the fires from the railroad, — 

*< When half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die." 



636 NOTES 

Of this poem he wrote in the journal of 1845: — 

** ' Dinas Emlinn ' of Scott, like his * Helvellyn,* shows 
how near to a poet he was. All the Birmingham part he 
had, and what taste and sense! Yet never rose into the 
creative region. As a practitioner or professional poet he is 
unrivalled in modern times.'* Yet he immediately adds, *' In 
lectures on Poetry almost all Scott would be to be produced.** 

Page 463, note i. Mr. Emerson took especial pleasure in 
the passage in the Lord of the Isles where the old abbot, ris- 
ing to denounce excommunicated Bruce to his foes, is inspired 
against his will to bless him and prophesy his triumph as 
Scotland's deliverer. 

Mr. Emerson, writing in his journal in 1 842 of his impa- 
tience of superficial city life, during a visit to New York, al- 
ludes to the renewed comfort he had in the Lord of the Isles : 

'* Life goes headlong. Each of us is always to be found 
hurrying headlong in the chase of some fact, hunted by some 
fear or command behind us. Suddenly we meet a friend. We 
pause. Our hurry and empressement look ridiculous. , . . 
When I read the Lord of the Isles last week at Staten Island, 
and when I meet my friend, I have the same feeling of shame 
at having allowed myself to be a mere huntsman and fol- 
lower. * * 

His boyish love for the Lay of the Last Minstrel re- 
mained through life. As we walked on Sunday afternoons 
he recited to his children the stanzas about ** the custom of 
Branksome Hall,** and the passage where the Ladye of Brank- 
some defies the spirits of the flood and fell; and the bleak 
mile of road between Walden woods and home would often 
call out from him 

** The way was long, the wind was cold. 
The Minstrel was infirm and old,*' etc. 



NOTES 637 

Page 46^ r note 7. The Bride of Lammermoor was the 
only dreary tale that Mr. Emerson could abide, except 
Griselda. 

Journal, 1856. ** Eugene Sue, Dumas, etc., when they 
begin a story, do not know how it will end, but Walter Scott, 
when he began the Bride of Lammermoor y had no choice; 
nor Shakspeare, nor Macbeth.'* 

Page 467, note I. Journal. '* We talked of Scott. There 
is some greatness in defying posterity and writing for the 
hour.'' 



SPEECH AT THE BANQUET IN HONOR OF 
THE CHINESE EMBASSY 

When the Chinese Embassy visited Boston in the summer 
of 1868 a banquet was given them at the St. James Hotel, on 
August 2 1 , The yoimg Emerson, sounding an early note of 
independence of the past, had written in 1824: — 

I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze. 

The bald antiquity of China praise; — 
but later he learned to revere the wisdom of Asia. About the 
time when the Dial appeared, many sentences of Chinese 
wisdom are found in his journal, and also in the magazine 
among the ** Ethnical Scriptures." 



638 NOTES 



REMARKS AT THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 
FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

In the spring of 1 867, a call for a public meeting was issued 
by Octavius B. Frothingham, William J. Potter and Rowland 
Connor " to consider the conditions, wants and progress of Free 
Religion in America." The response was so large as to sur- 
prise the committee, and Horticultural Hall was completely- 
filled on May 30. Rev. Octavius B. Frothingham presided. 
The committee had invited as speakers the Rev. H. Blanchard 
of Brooklyn fi-om the Universalists, Lucretia Mott from the 
Society of Friends, Robert Dale Owen from the Spiritualists, 
the Rev. John Weiss from the Left Wing of the Unitarians, 
Oliver Johnson from the Progressive Friends, Francis E. 
Abbot, editor of the Index ; and also David A. Wasson, 
Colonel T. W. Higginson and Mr. Emerson. The meeting 
was very successful and the Free Religious Association was 
founded. 

Mr. Emerson's genial and affirmative attitude at this meet- 
ing was helpful and important. He wished the new movement 
to be neither aggressive towards the beliefs of others, nor merely 
a religion of works, purely beneficently utilitarian. Doubtless 
there were many young and active radicals strong for destruct- 
ive criticism. Mr. Emerson wished to see that in their zeal 
to destroy the dry husk of religion they should not bruise the 
white flower within. His counsel to young men was, ** Omit 
all negative propositions. It will save ninety-nine one hun- 
dredths of your labor, and increase the value of your work in 
the same measure." 



NOTES 639 

Page 4'/Qi ^ote j. In the journal of 1 837 he said, '* Why 
rake up old manuscripts to find therein a man's soul ? You do 
not look for conversation in a corpse." And elsewhere, **In 
religion the sentiment is all, the ritual or ceremony indifferent.'* 



SPEECH AT THE SECOND ANNUAL MEETING 
OF THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 

Page 486y note i. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe writes of Mr. 
Emerson, — 

** He knew from the first the victory of good over evil; 
and when he told me, to my childish amazement, that the 
angel must always be stronger than the demon, he gave 
utterance to a thought most familiar to him, though at the time 
new to me." ' 

Page 48 8 f note j. In the essay on Character {^Lectures 
and Biographical Sketches), he says, ** The establishment of 
Christianity in the world does not rest on any miracle but the 
miracle of being the broadest and most humane doctrine." 

** The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, 
gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the 
blowing clover and the falling rain." — " Address in Divinity 
College," Nature, Addresses and Lectures. 

Page 4^0, note i. Mr. Emerson's doctrine was not to 
attack beliefs, but give better; ** True genius will not im- 
poverish, but will liberate." In a letter to one of his best 
friends who had joined the Church of Rome he said, perhaps 

*" Emerson's Relation to Society," in The Genius and Character of 
Emerson^ Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy, edited by F. B. 
Sanborn. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1885. 



640 NOTES 

in 1858: *< To old eyes how supremely unimportant the form 
under which we celebrate the justice, love and truth, the attri- 
butes of the deity and the soul! ** 

Page 4giy note i. Dr. Holmes, in his tribute to his friend, 
after his death, read before the Massachusetts Historical Soci- 
ety, said: — 

** What could we do with this unexpected, unprovided for, 
unclassified, half unwelcome newcomer, who had been for a 
while potted, as it were, in our Unitarian cold greenhouse, 
but had taken to growing so fast that he was lifting off its 
glass roof and letting in the hail-storms ? Here was a protest 
that outflanked the extreme left of liberalism, yet so calm and 
serene that its radicalism had the accents of the gospel of peace. 
Here was an iconoclast without a hammer, who took down 
our idols from their pedestals so tenderly that it seemed hke an 
act of worship.** 



ADDRESS AT THE OPENING OF THE CONCORD 
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY 

The Town of Concord, in the year 1782, chose a committee 
of ten leading citizens to give instructions to its selectmen. 
The third of the seventeen articles proposed by them read thus: 
"That care be taken of the Books of Marters and other 
bookes, and that they be kept from abusive usage, and not lent 
to persons more than one month at one time. ' ' This indicates 
the root of a town library. A constitution of a Library Com- 
pany, dated 1784, is extant. In 1806 a Social Library was 
incorporated, which was merged in the Town Library in 1 8 5 1 . 
The books were kept in a room in the Town House which 
was open for borrowers on Saturdays. 



NOTES 641 

William Munroe, son of a Concord tradesman who vied 
with the Thoreaus in the manufacture of lead pencils, after 
leaving the Concord schools went into business, and later into 
the manufacture of silk. His intelligence and force of charac- 
ter secured prosperity. He loved Concord, and, to use his 
own words, ** desired to testify my regard to my native town 
by doing something to promote the education and intelligence, 
and thus the welfare and prosperity of its people.'* He gave 
to Concord a lot of land in the heart of the town and a 
building for a Free Public Library, which, with great care and 
thoroughness, he had built thereon and duly furnished; and 
made handsome provision for care of the land and the ex- 
tension of the building later. He added a generous gift for 
books of reference and standard works. The town thankfully 
accepted the gift, placed their books in it, and chose their 
library committee. On a fine autumn day in 1 873, the Hbrary 
was opened with public ceremonies. Mr. Munroe in a short 
and modest speech explained his purpose; Mr. H. F. Smith, 
on behalf of the new Hbrary committee, reported its action 
and the gifts which had poured in; Judge Hoar received the 
property on behalf of the Board of Corporation, and Mr. 
Emerson, but lately returned with improved health from his 
journey to the Nile, made the short address. Writing was now 
very difficult for him, but the occasion pleased and moved him, 
and his notes on books and on Concord, and the remembrance 
of his friends the Concord authors but lately gone, served him, 
and the day passed off well. 

Page 4g8, note i. The Gospel Covenant, printed in Lon- 
don in 1646, and quoted by Mr. Emerson in the ** Historical 
Discourse. ' ' 

Page 4gg, note i. Major Simon Willard, a Kentish mer- 

XI 



642 NOTES 

chant was Peter Bulkeley's strong coadjutor in the founding 
of Concord. He also is alluded to in the ** Historical Dis- 



Page ^00, note i. These extracts are from the diary of 
Miss Mary Moody Emerson. 

Page ^00, note 2. This letter was written not long after 
the death of John Thoreau, Henry's dearly loved brother, and 
also of little Waldo Emerson, to whom he became greatly 
attached while he was a member of Mr. Emerson's house- 
hold. 

Page ^01 y note i. Mr. Emerson here speaks for others. 
He could not read Hawthorne because of the gloom of his 
magic mirror, but the man interested and attracted him, though 
even as neighbors they seldom met. 

Page ^o6, note i. Mr. Emerson notes that this is an allu- 
sion to the ** Harmonies of Ptolemy." 



THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 

In 1863, during the dark days of the Civil War, before the 
tide had fully turned in the field, while disaffection showed 
itself in the North, and England and France threatened inter- 
vention, Mr. Emerson gave a hopeful lecture, the basis of the 
present discourse, on the Fortune of the Republic. After the 
war it was adapted to the new and happier conditions. On 
the 30th of March, 1878, six years after Mr. Emerson had 
withdrawn from literary work, and but four years before his 
death, he was induced to read the lecture in the Old South 
Church, in a course planned by the committee, to save the 
venerable building. The church was filled, Mr. Emerson's 



NOTES 643 

delivery was good, and he seemed to enjoy the occasion. It 

was probably his last speech in public, and so fitly closes the 
volume. 

Page $13, note 7. This passage occurred in the early lec- 
ture: — 

**It is the distinction of man to think, and all the few 
men who, since the beginning of the world, have done any- 
thing for us were men who did not follow the river, or ship 
the cotton, or pack the pork, but who thought for themselves. 
What the country wants is personalities, - — grand persons, — 
to counteract its materialities, for it is the rule of the universe 
that corn shall serve man, and not man, corn.*' 

Page 57p, note I. Here followed: «* What we call ' Ken- 
tucky,* or « Vallandigham,* or 'Fernando Wood* is really 
the ignorance and nonsense in us, stolid stupidity which 
gives the strength to those names. ... It is our own vice 
which takes form, or gives terror with which these persons 
affect us.*' 

P^^^ 520, note I. This refers to a young Massachusetts 
scholar, of promise and beauty, whom Mr. Emerson had been 
pleased with, as a fellow voyager. He soon was corrupted by 
poHtics. Coming up, at a reception, to shake hands with Mr. 
Emerson he was thus greeted: '< If what I hear of your recent 
action be true, I must shake hands with you under protest.*' 
Soon after, this aspirant for power attended the dinner given 
to Brooks after his cowardly assault on Sumner; but the mo- 
ment the Emancipation Proclamation had been approved by 
the people, he became an ornamental figurehead at Republican 
and reform gatherings. 

Page ^20, note 2. From the last scene of Cynthia* s Revels, 
by Ben Jonson. 



644 NOTES 

Page ^21 J note j. '* The one serious and formidable thing 
in Nature is a will.'* — <« Fate," Conduct of Life, p. 30. 

See also "Aristocracy/* in Lectures and Biographical 
Sketches, p. 50. 

Page ^24, note z. Ben Jonson, The Golden Age Re- 
stored. 

Page ^26, note i. 

She spawneth men as mallows fresh. 

"Nature,** II., Poems, 

See also the ** Song of Nature,** in the Poems. 

Page ^26, note 2. In the earlier lecture was this passage: — 

** The roots of our success are in our poverty, our Calvin- 
ism, our thrifty habitual industry, — in our snow and east wind, 
and farm -life and sea-life. . . . 

** There is in this country this immense difference from 
Europe, that, whereas all their systems of government and 
society are historical, our politics are almost ideal. We wish 
to treat man as man, without regard to rank, wealth, race, 
color, or caste, — simply as human souls. We lie near to 
Nature, we are pensioners on Nature, draw on inexhaustible 
resources, and we interfere the least possible with individual 
freedom.'* 

Page ^2'J, note i. In the ** Historical Discourse ** in this 
volume, Mr. Emerson tells of the evolution of the town-meet- 
ing of New England and its working excellence, and of the 
latter also in "Social Aims** and "Eloquence,** in Letters 
and Social Aims, 

Page S40, note i. 

For you can teach the lightning speech. 
And round the globe your voices reach. 

" Boston,** Poems, 



NOTES 645 

Page ^41, note I. 

I will divide my goods; 
Call in the wretch and slave: 
None shall rule but the humble, 
And none but Toil shall have. 

** Boston Hymn,*' Poems, 

Page ^44, note i. The following passages came from the 
earlier lecture: — 

** I must be permitted to read a quotation from De Tocque- 
ville, whose censure is more valuable, as it comes from one 
obviously very partial to the American character and institu- 
tions: — 

" ' I know no country in which there is so little true inde- 
pendence of opinion and freedom of discussion as in America ' 
(vol. i., p. 259)." 

**I am far from thinking it late. I don't despond at all 
whilst I hear the verdicts of European juries against us -— 
Renan says this; Arnold says that. That does not touch us. 

** 'T is doubtfiil whether London, whether Paris can answer 
the questions which now rise in the human mind. But the hu- 
manity of all nations is now in the American Union. Europe, 
England is historical still. Our politics, our social frame are 
almost ideal. We have got suppled into a state of meliora- 
tion. When I see the emigrants landing at New York, I say. 
There they go — to school. 

** In estimating nations, potentiality must be considered as 
well as power; not what to-day's actual performance is, but 
what promise is in the mind which a crisis will bring 
out." 

* * The war has established a chronic hope, for a chronic 
despair. It is not a question whether we shall be a nation, or 



646 NOTES 

only a multitude of people. No, that has been conspicuously 
decided already; but whether we shall be the new nation, 
guide and lawgiver of all nations, as having clearly chosen and 
firmly held the simplest and best rule of political society. 

'* Culture, be sure, is in some sort the very enemy of na- 
tionality and makes us citizens of the world; and yet it is 
essential that it should have the flavor of the soil in which it 
grew, and combine this with universal sympathies. Thus in 
this country are new traits and distinctions not known to former 
history. Colonies of an old country, but in new and com- 
manding conditions. Colonies of a small and crowded island, 
but planted on a continent and therefore working it in small 
settlements, where each man must count for ten, and is put to 
his mettle to come up to the need. . . . 

*< Pray leave these English to form their opinions. 'Tis 
a matter of absolute insignificance what those opinions are. 
They will fast enough run to change and retract them on their 
knees when they know who you are. . . . 

** I turn with pleasure to the good omen in the distinguished 
reception given in London to Mr. Beecher. It was already 
prepared by the advocacy of Cobden, Bright and Forster, 
Mill, Newman, Cairnes and Hughes, and by the intelligent 
Americans already sent to England by our Government to com- 
municate with intelligent men in the English Government and 
out of it. But Mr. Beecher owed his welcome to himself. 
He fought his way to his reward. It is one of the memor- 
able exhibitions of the force of eloquence, — his evening at 
Exeter Hall. The consciousness of power shown in his broad 
good sense, in his jocular humor and entire presence of mind, 
the surrender of the English audience on recognizing the true 
master. He steers the Behemoth, sits astride him, strokes 
his fur, tickles his ear, and rides where he will. And I like 



NOTES 647 

the well-timed compliment there paid to our fellow citizen 
when the stormy audience reminds him to tell England that 
Wendell Phillips is the first orator of the world. One or- 
ator had a right to speak of the other, — Byron's thunder- 
storm, where 

" 'Jura answers from his misty shroud 

Back to the joyous Alps who call to him aloud.' 

** The young men in America to-day take little thought of 
what men in England are thinking or doing. That is the point 
which decides the welfare of a people, — which way does it 
look P If to any other people, it is not well with them. If 
occupied in its own affairs, and thoughts, and men, with a 
heat which excludes almost the notice of any other people, — 
as the Jews, as the Greeks, as the Persians, as the Romans, the 
Arabians, the French, the English, at their best times have 
done, — they are sublime; and we know that in this abstrac- 
tion they are executing excellent work. Amidst the calamities 
that war has brought on our Country, this one benefit has 
accrued, — that our eyes are withdrawn from England, with- 
drawn from France, and look homeward. We have come to 
feel that 

<* * By ourselves our safety must be bought; ' 

to know the vast resources of the continent; the good will that 
is in the people; their conviction of the great moral advantages 
of freedom, social equality, education and religious culture, and 
their determination to hold these fast, and by these hold fast 
the Country, and penetrate every square inch of it with this 
American civilization. . . . 

" Americans — not girded by the iron belt of condition, 
not taught by society and institutions to magnify trifles, not 



648 NOTES 

victims of technical logic, but docile to the logic of events; 
not, like English, w^orshippers of fate; with no hereditary 
upper house, but w^ith legal, popular assemblies, which con- 
stitute a perpetual insurrection, and by making it perpetual save 
us from revolutions." 



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